EF0 tornado, Crain, Illinois, April 7, 2010

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

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

2. EF186 to 110 mph

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

3. EF2111 to 135 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. EF3136 to 165 mph

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

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

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

6. EF5over 200 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

EF0

Date

April 7, 2010

Touchdown

4:28 PM CDT (21:28 UTC)

Lifted

4:31 PM CDT (21:31 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.9 miles (3.0 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5,000

County

Jackson County

Touchdown point

37.765, -89.530

Lift-off point

37.783, -89.504

Record number

1004071528-01

A cold front trailed south-southwestward from a surface low pressure center over west central Illinois through southeast Missouri. This cold front provided the low level lift for short lines of thunderstorms to develop during the late afternoon. Some breaks in the clouds allowed sunshine to destabilize the atmosphere, but mixed layer capes remained at or below 1000 j/kg due to modest lapse rates and low-level moisture. Surface dew points around 60 degrees pooled along the front. Wind profiles were unidirectional and generally parallel to the front. As a result, the storms were mainly organized into short linear structures with some bowing segments. An isolated non-supercell tornado occurred west of Murphysboro.

Half of the metal roof of a small farm shed was blown off. A large tree and less than a dozen small trees were blown down. A tree and power lines were down on Highway 3. A few signs were blown down. Less than ten percent of the metal roofing and siding was blown off a house. Some wheat less than a foot tall was blown down. A trained spotter and a local resident took photos, but the tornado was very difficult to identify through the rain. Peak winds in this tornado were estimated near 85 mph.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 18:25 UTC and running to 23:55 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:43 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 Paducah radar (KPAH), 102 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:30 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.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2010 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are

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.