Tornado Activities and Disaster Characteristics in China in 2025

Based on a multi-source information fusion methodology, this study systematically analyzes China's tornado activities and disaster characteristics in 2025. The main conclusions are as follows: Tornado activities in 2025 exhibited an annual characteristic of "increased frequency but reduced intensity" relative to that in 2024, with a total of 117 land-based tornadoes and 48 waterspouts that occurred entirely over water, and the maximum intensity rated at EF2. The spatiotemporal distribution of tornadoes in China in 2025 was highly concentrated, with approximately 84% of them occurring from June to September and about 92% during daytime. Geographically, tornadoes were primarily distributed in the Northeast, East, and South China. This distribution pattern was influenced by both climatic background and factors such as observational capabilities and population density. Moreover, comprehensive observational analysis identified several spatiotemporally correlated "tornado family" cases, none of which exhibited dominant characteristics of classic, deep supercells in radar detection. In recent years, satellite remote sensing has been incorporated as an auxiliary method for identifying tornadoes through disaster assessment, which determines tornado paths by analyzing typical surface traces. However, its practical effectiveness may be constrained by factors such as the clarity of these traces, satellite revisit cycles, and cloud cover. Although ground-based disaster surveys have developed relatively standardized operational procedures, their coverage remains insufficient due to limitations in manpower and response timeliness. Consequently, while the current tornado database covers the majority of tornado events, it inevitably still misses some weak tornadoes, resulting in deficiencies in data completeness. Future efforts should focus on further improving monitoring networks and tornado information collection mechanisms to develop a more comprehensive tornado database.