Portal:Weather/On this day list/May 22

May 22

1951: Hurricane Able, the strongest off-season Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, reached its peak strength of 115 miles per hour (185 km/h) off the coast of Cape Hatteras.

1981: The GOES 5 weather satellite was launched. Part of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite program, GOES 5 would provide weather forecasting data to the United States until its main imaging instrument failed in 1984.

2004: An F4 tornado, one of the widest on record peaking at 2.5 miles (4.0 km) wide, destroyed the village of Hallam, Nebraska.

2011: A violent tornado killed 158 people and destroyed much of the city of Joplin, Missouri. This was the most people killed by a single tornado in the United States since the beginning of official tornado forecasts in 1950.