Why is it that it seems like tornados never hit major cities (even in south and Midwest) seems like it’s always small towns. Even if they do spawn in major cities they seem to avoid any major areas. I Don’t seem to hear of massive cities getting leveled by tornados. (Atleast in my area)
In: Planetary Science
As an illustrative exercise: calculate the area of a major city, then calculate the area of land likely to be hit by a tornado and compare. Even at 1% it would mean that only 1 out of every 100 tornadoes would hit it (if tornadoes were evenly distributed across said land area).
I live in Indiana. The area of our largest city (Indianapolis) is [380 square miles](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianapolis) or so. The area of the entire state is 35,817 square miles.
Indianapolis represents 1.033% of the land area of the entire state.
Indiana gets something like [25 tornadoes per year on average.](https://wishtv.com/weather/weather-stories/ohio-river-valley-has-been-a-hot-spot-for-tornadoes-so-far-in-2024/)
Based on that, you’d expect a tornado to affect Indianapolis about once every 4 years.
According to this https://www.weather.gov/ind/marion_torn, Marion county (the county where Indianapolis is) has experienced 47 tornadoes since 1950.
Which works out to about one every year and a half.
So to answer your question: cities do get tornadoes, it’s just rare enough that it doesn’t feel like it. And if when you say “cities” you’re picturing a downtown with skyscrapers… that actual land area is even smaller. In Indianapolis’s case you’re talking going down from 380 square miles to something like 6-7 square miles at best, which would be two orders of magnitude smaller of a target for tornadoes, or something like a 1 in 10,000 chance of it happening.
Latest Answers