When is tornado season in Alabama? Two of them, and the second one comes at night

Short answer: in north Alabama the main tornado season runs March through May, with April the single worst month. A second, smaller season runs from November through February, and two out of three of its tornadoes touch down after dark. Summer is the only stretch that is reliably quiet, and even it is not empty.

Those statements come from our own count of NOAA's Storm Events Database: every tornado recorded from January 1996 through June 2026 in the eleven Alabama counties the National Weather Service office in Huntsville covers (Colbert, Cullman, DeKalb, Franklin, Jackson, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Limestone, Madison, Marshall and Morgan). That comes to 424 tornadoes over thirty and a half years. The pattern matches what the Huntsville-Madison County EMA tells residents on its natural hazards page: a main season from March through May and a second one in the fall, usually November.

The two seasons at a glance

North Alabama tornadoes by month

April alone holds 133 of the 424, close to a third. The April 27, 2011 outbreak is part of that, with 39 tornadoes in these counties that April, but take them out and April's 94 still edges May's 92. November ties February at 25, which puts it level with the worst of winter and nearly half of March's count.

Why November matters here

Ask around Huntsville and most people will say tornado season is spring. The record disagrees. Since 1950, NOAA records eight cold-season days when a tornado rated F2 or stronger touched down in Madison County. Six of the eight were in November:

• November 24, 1967, 1:05 p.m.: F2, 6.6 miles, seven people hurt.
• December 18, 1967, 3:25 a.m.: F2, 20.2 miles, 27 hurt, in the middle of the night.
• November 27, 1973, 6:33 p.m.: F3, 14.1 miles, 42 hurt.
• November 15, 1989, 4:30 p.m.: the F4 through Airport Road and Jones Valley that killed 21 and hurt 463 (the full story is on our Huntsville tornado history page).
• November 22, 1992, 6:55 a.m.: F2, five hurt.
• November 24, 2001, 1:50 p.m.: F2 near New Hope.
• January 21, 2010, 5:15 p.m.: EF2 that began in a housing area on Redstone Arsenal about two miles south of the Weather Service office, stripped siding along Magnolia Circle, then came down again near Triana Boulevard and 9th Avenue and ran through Old Town and Five Points (NOAA event record).
• November 29, 2016, 9:29 p.m.: EF2 that snapped trees along the brow of Monte Sano near the state park campground, then hit Ryland Pike and the Central Estates neighborhood on a 13-mile track toward Greenfield (NOAA event record).

Five of those eight started after 5 p.m. or before 7 a.m., near or after dark at that time of year. You can't judge a storm from the window at 9 p.m. in late November, so the warning on your phone or weather radio has to be what moves you.

After dark: the part people underestimate

Across the whole year, 195 of the 424 north Alabama tornadoes, or 46%, began before sunrise or after sunset at Huntsville. In spring the share is 42%. From November through February it jumps to 58 of 87, two in every three, because the days are short and the storms keep coming through the evening and overnight.

NOAA logs every time in Central Standard Time, so during daylight saving months add an hour to read it as the clock on your wall. The late-afternoon block is the busiest by far, but 62 tornadoes, about one in seven, started between midnight and 6 a.m., when most families are asleep, and the county EMA says the outdoor sirens are not designed to be heard indoors. Our tornado warning guide covers the weather radio and phone alerts that will.

What the calendar means for a shelter

• Don't wait for March. A shelter put in during the fall covers both seasons: the November-to-February run and the spring peak that follows.
• Plan for getting there in the dark. A garage-floor or in-home unit you can reach in seconds without stepping outside is easier at 3 a.m. in December than a yard shelter across wet grass. The underground shelters page compares the two.
• Keep the shelter ready all year, not just in April: a flashlight inside, shoes by the door, the lid or door cleared of leaves and clutter. Register it with first responders as described on the history page.
• Mind the tax credit calendar. Alabama's credit application has to go in during the same calendar year the shelter is built or installed, so a December install means a December application. Check the numbers with the tax credit calculator.

How we counted

We pulled NOAA's bulk Storm Events detail files for 1996 through 2026 (the 2026 file runs through June) and kept every tornado row in the eleven counties listed above. A tornado that crosses a county line appears as one row per county, so we dropped 72 rows that continued a track already counted, leaving 424 tornadoes. "After dark" means the recorded start time was before sunrise or after sunset at Huntsville on that date. The Madison County list above goes back to 1950 and uses the original F-scale ratings for storms before 2007. Source: NOAA NCEI Storm Events Database. Counts will rise slightly as NOAA adds the second half of 2026.

Good questions

When is tornado season in Alabama?

In north Alabama the main season is March through May, with April the peak: 279 of 424 tornadoes recorded from 1996 to mid-2026 in the NWS Huntsville counties came in those three months. A second season runs November through February and produced 87 more.

Does Alabama have a second tornado season in November?

Yes. November logged 25 tornadoes in north Alabama from 1996 to mid-2026, as many as February, and six of the eight cold-season days with an F2-or-stronger tornado in Madison County since 1950 were in November, including the 1989 F4 that killed 21 people in south Huntsville.

Do Alabama tornadoes happen at night?

Often. 46% of north Alabama tornadoes from 1996 to mid-2026 began before sunrise or after sunset, and in the November to February season the share was two in three.