EF3 tornado, Lincns New Salem St to Tice, Illinois, December 31, 2010

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF3

Date

December 31, 2010

Touchdown

12:37 PM CST (18:37 UTC)

Lifted

12:40 PM CST (18:40 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

3.6 miles (5.8 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

1

Property damage

$12 million

County

Menard County

Touchdown point

39.984, -89.862

Lift-off point

40.013, -89.805

Record number

1012311237-01

22 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ILX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF3. The highest wind the damage implies is 145 mph.

• Numerous large trees with branches snapped off. One pine was uprooted. Some homes in the area had shingles torn off.
• Maintenance shed of golf course severely damaged. Finished Morton Building type construction. One side wall contianing overhead door collapsed and resulted in much of roof being torn off. Some windows were smashed in as well. Shingles were torn off adjacent building similar to a single family home. Several trees were also blown down.
• .Numerous large trees severely damaged.
• Thirty five pine trees snapped off. A couple other trees were uprooted. One tree fell on a garage and damaged the roof. Several houses had a few shingles torn off.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A strong cold front pushed across central Illinois on December 31st, triggering a line of strong to severe thunderstorms. Unseasonably warm and moist air ahead of the front aided in initial storm development, while a strong upper-level disturbance created a highly sheared environment. One of the resulting supercell thunderstorms produced an EF3 tornado that tracked across the Lake Petersburg area in Menard County, creating considerable damage.

A tornado touched down on the west side of Lake Petersburg at 12:37 PM CST, then tracked northeast over the lake and across Sunny Acres Road, before lifting southeast of the intersection of Tice Road and Illinois 123 at 12:40 PM CST. A total of 29 homes sustained significant structural damage, four of which could not be repaired. Two barns were also destroyed, and nearly 100 houses and a nursing home had minor damage along the path of the tornado. One person was seriously injured when the tornado caused a large tree limb to fall on their automobile, crushing the car and trapping the occupant.

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

0 minutes of warning. NWS ILX issued a tornado warning for this county at 18:37 UTC, 0 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 19:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 16:34 UTC and running to 19:18 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:23 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.

Springfield (SPI), 21 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Lincoln radar (KILX), 46 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:35 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

28 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.