F1 tornado, Champaign, Illinois, October 24, 2001

1. F040 to 72 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. F173 to 112 mphthis tornado

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. F2113 to 157 mph

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. F3158 to 206 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. F4207 to 260 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. F5261 to 318 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unrated

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

F1

Date

October 24, 2001

Touchdown

1:55 PM CDT (18:55 UTC)

Path length

1.0 miles (1.6 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

2

Property damage

$500,000

County

Champaign County

Touchdown point

40.150, -88.300

Lift-off point

40.170, -88.280

Record number

377

The tornado initially touched down just west of the intersection of Interstates 57 and 74. An animal hospital sustained minor damage to some free standing brick walls. Moving east northeast from this location, a semi was blown over on the clover leaf of the Interstate intersection. The driver did not sustain any injuries. To the east of the intersection, a fabrication business was destroyed with the entire building having collapsed and a 30 foot section of the front wall was pushed back towards the rear of the building. Two occupants of the business sustained minor injuries. One sustained a broken hand and numerous cuts and bruises and the other occupant had a minor bump on his head. Another building behind this business sustained major damage. The tornado then crossed a field into a small subdivision. A duplex sustained major damage when the western half of it was destroyed. Further down several homes sustained minor roof damage, with the exception of one home which had part of its roof ripped off. Numerous trees and several power lines were blown down as well. Damage was estimated around $500,000.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

13 minutes of warning. NWS ILX issued a tornado warning for this county at 18:42 UTC, 13 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 19:30 UTC.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a High Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 16:00 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

The Lincoln radar (KILX), 89 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:55 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2001 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are

24 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.