A tornado hit the same house twice, and it's not unprecedented

Looping tornado tracks likely happen at least once a year. A tornado that loops is a result of a "failed occlusion."

Lightning can strike twice, but can a tornado? Tornadoes that loop back on their own track are not as rare as one might think. In fact, looped tornadoes have happened at least twice this year.

On July 27, a tornado near Hazel Crest, Illinois, moved over a house at 16880 Anthony Avenue, then moved north of the town before turning back south and passing over the same house again, according to the track from a NWS (National Weather Service) damage survey. The tornado was rated EF0 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale.

An image of the NWS tornado track overlaid onto Google Maps showed the path crossing near the house on Anthony Avenue twice.

"The tornado reached its peak intensity at [its northern extent]," the NWS continued, "removing the roof of an industrial building on W 167th Street and causing damage to the exterior walls and roof of an apartment complex on 171st Street."

"After reaching its northernmost point between W 154th Street and W 155th Street," the NWS said, "the tornado looped back southward, rapidly accelerating as it re-entered Markham and Hazel Crest."

While there's no word on whether the houses were damaged, the NWS reported trees down on adjacent streets.

The strongest tornado of 2026 also looped

The Hazel Crest tornado wasn't the only tornado to do a loop this year. The strongest tornado of the year so far, rated EF4, hit Enid, Oklahoma, on April 23. The twister did a loop twice. However, it was over farmland, and no homes were damaged.

Those are just two examples from this year. Looping tornado tracks likely happen at least once a year. Research suggests that the infamous and deadly El Reno tornado in 2013 likely looped over rural areas. Initially rated as an EF5 tornado by the NWS, the twister was later downgraded to an EF3 tornado due to a lack of visual damage.

What makes a tornado loop?

In meteorology, a tornado that loops is a result of a "failed occlusion." As part of a low-pressure system's lifecycle, which includes a tornado's parent supercell thunderstorm, after maturing, the tornado tends to move northward or westward toward the back of the supercell and "occlude." Researchers believe that occlusion essentially involves the rotating column of air being either ejected from or cut off by the storm before it disappears.

"During a tornado occlusion, sinking air wraps around the circulation of the tornado, which is rotating and rising. This interrupts the tornado's circulation, ending it," AccuWeather Extreme Meteorologist Dr. Reed Timmer said.

In some cases, a new rotation can spin up in a different, more favorable location inside the storm, and the process begins again. Many supercell thunderstorms cycle through multiple tornadoes, forming and then occluding twisters more than once. More unusual is a tornado that moves as if it is about to occlude, but the rotation never stops. This is what produces looping tracks like those shown above.

In rare cases, two tornadoes can occur in the same thunderstorm, either as twin tornadoes or as satellite tornadoes, in which one is smaller and rotates around the larger tornado.

A spot of land can also get hit by multiple tornado tracks that can also pass over the same area within months or even hours of each other. In 2024, a house in Arkansas sustained damage from a tornado, then was damaged by another less than a year later.

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