Tornado Confirmed in Rio Grande Do Sul as Brazil's Storm Toll Spreads
Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state confirmed one tornado affecting three municipalities on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, as neighboring Santa Catarina's toll from the same week's storms rose to a second death and 109 municipalities with damage.
Rio Grande do Sul's Civil Defense said tornadoes touched down in rural areas of Erval Grande, Itatiba do Sul and Barra do Rio Azul. The towns sit in the state's northern region, where an instability line moved through on Wednesday morning, Nov. 4, 2026. The agency said it identified the tornadoes from videos and damage reports, together with weather radar data from Chapecó, in neighboring Santa Catarina. It had issued a red alert for the region ahead of the storms — the second-highest level on its five-step color scale, one step below purple, the agency's top level for extreme risk requiring immediate action.
Damage was also reported in nearby Aratiba, but the agency's Technical Note No. 016/2026 said the evidence collected did not allow it to confirm whether that damage came from the same tornado. The Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported that the agency confirmed, in the early afternoon on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026, that the damage in the three towns came from the same tornado.
Rio Grande do Sul's Civil Defense said its statewide tally, as of Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026, shows 25 people injured and one person missing. In total 49,909 people have been affected, with 93 left homeless and 235 displaced. Ten homes were destroyed and 6,496 damaged, across 123 municipalities, 116 of which reported injuries or material damage.
The state agency also said, in a statement reported by Folha de S.Paulo, that it had confirmed two deaths amid the week's storms. The body of a 44-year-old motorcyclist missing since Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Sagrada Família after being swept away by floodwater was found Thursday morning, Nov. 5, 2026. The body of a 71-year-old woman was found near a river in Cacique Doble, where she had lived alone in a house about 20 meters from the water, the municipality's civil defense said. Rio Grande do Sul's Civil Defense said it could not confirm the deaths were connected to the storms, and that neither occurred in the towns where the tornado was recorded.
In Santa Catarina, the State Civil Defense (SDC/SC) said in a bulletin on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026, that two deaths have now been recorded in the week's storms. One happened in Rio Negrinho, when a fuel station structure collapsed, and the other in Xanxerê, where a 46-year-old woman died of electric shock after a high-tension cable ruptured. The agency's toll from the storms that began Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, rose to 109 municipalities with damage. By Thursday morning, Nov. 5, 2026, 32 of those municipalities had declared a state of emergency. In total, 5,531 homes have been affected, leaving 56 people homeless and 252 displaced, the agency said.
In Rio do Sul, flooding in the Barra do Trombudo neighborhood blocked access to a local school. Firefighters rescued 30 people stranded there, including children, using an inflatable boat, the agency said.
ND Mais, a Brazilian news outlet, reported that Santa Catarina's Civil Defense confirmed a third tornado on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026. It touched down in Rio Negrinho, in the Planalto Norte region, with gusts above 100 km/h. The other two tornadoes that day were recorded in Chapecó and Xanxerê, in the west of the state. The agency told ND Mais that not all of the damage in Rio Negrinho came from the tornado, because part of it came from the straight-line wind gusts that accompanied the wider storm.
