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How Fast Are Tornadoes, Hurricanes and Lightning?

Published May 2026 · How Fast Is

Weather is where speed feels most personal. We've all watched a storm approach, felt wind we couldn't push back against, or heard thunder and then counted the seconds until the next flash. The numbers behind these everyday phenomena are surprising — and a few of them are genuinely terrifying.

Here's a breakdown of the speeds in weather, ranked from slow to extreme.

Falling rain: about 9 m/s

A typical raindrop falling from cloud level reaches terminal velocity within the first second of falling — that is, the speed at which air resistance balances gravity. For most raindrops, that's around 9 metres per second, or about 32 km/h. See a raindrop's terminal velocity on our scale.

Bigger drops fall faster (heavier means more force pushing down against the same air resistance). The largest possible raindrops cap out at about 10 mm in diameter, and at that size they're falling at around 9-10 m/s. Larger drops break apart from air pressure during the fall.

Drizzle drops are smaller and slower — about 2 m/s. Mist particles barely fall at all; they're carried by air currents.

Hail: 9-45 m/s

Hailstones are denser than raindrops and can be much bigger. A typical pea-sized hailstone falls at around 9 m/s — similar to rain. But large hail, the kind that damages roofs and cars, falls much faster. A 5cm-diameter hailstone can hit the ground at around 35 m/s (125 km/h). See hail on our scale.

The largest recorded hailstone, in South Dakota in 2010, was 20cm wide and weighed nearly 900 grams. At that size, terminal velocity is somewhere around 40-45 m/s — fast enough to be genuinely dangerous, and yes, it's been known to kill people.

The interesting part is how hailstones grow. They're lifted up and down through thunderclouds repeatedly by updrafts, adding a new layer of ice with each cycle. Cut a large hailstone in half and you can count the layers like tree rings.

Snow: less than 1 m/s

Snowflakes fall slowly — typically around 0.3 to 1 m/s. Their large, irregular shapes provide huge air resistance relative to their tiny mass. This is why snow seems to drift down rather than fall: at those speeds, the slightest breath of air sends a flake sideways. See falling snow on our scale.

Typical wind speeds

Everyday wind speeds, on the Beaufort scale:

Hurricanes: 33-90 m/s

The Beaufort scale tops out at Force 12 (32.7 m/s), and "hurricane force" is anything beyond. The Saffir-Simpson scale subdivides hurricanes further:

The strongest tropical cyclone on record was Hurricane Patricia in 2015, with sustained winds peaking at 95 m/s (340 km/h). See hurricane wind speeds on our scale.

One thing worth noting: hurricane speeds are sustained wind speeds, averaged over one minute. Brief gusts can be substantially higher. And the actual hurricane (the storm system) typically moves across the ground much more slowly — about 5-15 m/s. The wind speed and the storm's translation speed are different things.

Tornadoes: up to 135 m/s

Tornadoes are dramatically faster than hurricanes, by wind speed, even though they cover a tiny fraction of the area. The Enhanced Fujita scale runs from EF0 to EF5:

The highest wind speed ever measured on Earth, anywhere, was inside the El Reno tornado in Oklahoma in 2013: approximately 135 m/s (485 km/h). That's faster than most commercial airliners. See tornado wind speeds on our scale.

At those speeds, the wind isn't just blowing — it's a battering ram. A 100 mph (45 m/s) wind exerts about 25 pounds of force per square foot. A 200 mph (90 m/s) wind exerts about 100 pounds per square foot. Twice the speed, four times the force, because force scales with the square of velocity.

Lightning: 30,000 to 100,000,000 m/s

Lightning is several different speeds at once, depending on what you're measuring.

The stepped leader (the initial path of charge that ionises the air before the visible flash) moves at around 100,000 m/s — fast, but visible to slow-motion cameras.

The return stroke (the bright flash itself, when the main current surges back up the ionised path) moves at around one-third the speed of light: 100,000,000 m/s. See lightning on our scale.

The thunder (the shockwave from the channel being instantly heated to 30,000°C) moves at the speed of sound — about 343 m/s in dry air. This is why you see lightning before you hear thunder, and why you can estimate the distance to a strike by counting seconds (roughly 3 seconds per kilometre).

The temperature of the lightning channel is briefly hotter than the surface of the Sun. The shockwave from the explosive expansion is what we hear as thunder.

The fastest weather phenomenon: pyroclastic flows

If we include volcanic weather, pyroclastic flows (fast-moving currents of hot gas and volcanic material) can reach speeds of up to 250 m/s — that's 900 km/h. The 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée on Martinique generated a pyroclastic flow that destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre and killed nearly 30,000 people in two minutes. Only two people in the town survived. See pyroclastic flow speeds on our scale.

These aren't strictly "weather" in the meteorological sense, but they belong on any honest catalogue of fast-moving fluid phenomena that can affect people.

Putting it in perspective

Most weather speeds — even the dramatic ones — are dwarfed by ordinary technology. A commercial airliner cruises at around 250 m/s, faster than the strongest tornado ever measured. A bullet from a high-powered rifle travels at around 900 m/s, faster than any natural wind phenomenon on Earth. The fastest jet aircraft ever flown (the SR-71 Blackbird) cruised at over 980 m/s, faster than a hurricane's eye wall and approaching the speed of a pyroclastic flow.

But weather speeds have something the human-built world generally doesn't: they're carrying enormous amounts of mass. A 100 mph wind isn't impressive because the air molecules are moving fast — they barely are, compared to a bullet — but because there's an enormous quantity of them moving together. That's why hurricanes flatten towns. The total kinetic energy is staggering, even when the per-particle speed is modest.

It's a reminder that "speed" alone isn't always what makes something dangerous. Mass matters too. And weather brings the mass.

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