A tornado warning covered parts of Davis County Friday afternoon, sending residents in Layton, Kaysville, Farmington and Mountain Green scrambling for shelter as forecasters warned of hail as big as ping-pong balls. The alert also stretched into Morgan and surrounding communities, putting a wide swath of the Wasatch Front on edge during what had already been a stormy stretch of weather.
According to KUTV, the National Weather Service issued the tornado warning for parts of Davis County Friday, with the alert set to remain in effect until 2:15 p.m. The station reported that radar had indicated a possible tornado in the area, prompting the warning to go out across Layton, Kaysville, Farmington, Mountain Green, Morgan and the surrounding region.
Forecasters cited by the outlet said the storm system was capable of producing hail up to the size of ping-pong balls, a detail that underscored just how much punch the cell was packing as it moved through northern Utah. People inside the warned area were told to stay away from windows and to seek shelter in a basement or an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building, per the same report.
Lightning Show Precedes the Warning
The tornado warning followed a lightning storm that lit up the skies across the Wasatch Front earlier Friday, with strikes captured on camera from Springville all the way to Salt Lake City, the report noted. That stretch of electrical activity set the stage for the more serious warning that followed as the system pushed north into Davis County.
Not every account of Friday's weather lined up cleanly. TornadoPath, a site that tracks tornado activity nationwide, reported that there had been one tornado warning in Utah on Friday. But a separate search snippet from that same site stated that the National Weather Service had issued no tornado warnings for Utah that day — a conflicting, lower-confidence claim that leaves the exact warning count for the state unsettled even as KUTV's report of the Davis County warning stands on its own.
Davis County's History With Twisters
Friday's warning arrived in a county with a documented track record for this kind of weather. TornadoPath data shows Davis County ranks among Utah's three most tornado-prone counties, alongside Salt Lake and Box Elder counties, with the trio accounting for a quarter of all tornado activity recorded statewide. Salt Lake County alone has logged 15 tornado events, or roughly 10.3% of the state's total.
Statewide, Utah has recorded 146 tornado events through the end of 2025, averaging about 1.7 twisters a year, or 1.6 per year over the last decade, according to TornadoPath's historical figures. May is typically the state's most active month for tornadoes, with 32 recorded events making up nearly 22% of the total — meaning Friday's September warning fell well outside the season when Utah usually sees its worst tornado activity.
Residents looking to track future storms can monitor conditions through the National Weather Service's radar tool, which displays current conditions on a map alongside forecasts and alerts, or through the agency's Weather and Hazards Data Viewer, which tracks severe weather warnings in addition to fire information.
