EF1 tornado, Moccasin to Holland, Illinois, February 20, 2014

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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

February 20, 2014

Touchdown

4:54 PM CST (22:54 UTC)

Lifted

4:56 PM CST (22:56 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.5 miles (2.5 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$80,000

County

Effingham County

Touchdown point

39.178, -88.723

Lift-off point

39.195, -88.704

Record number

1402201654-01

2 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LSX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 105 mph.

• Machine shed damaged. Minor roof panneling uplifted.
• Large machine shed completely destroyed. Debris metal panneling was tossed over 1/3 mile mainly to the north. Numerous pieces of the metal panelling tossed to the north.

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

A rapidly deepening area of low pressure tracked from near Kansas City to southwest Wisconsin by the evening of February 20th. Thunderstorms developed along the trailing cold front across Missouri during the early afternoon, then pushed eastward into central Illinois during the late afternoon into the early evening. Eight tornadoes touched down across central Illinois, including an EF-2 tornado south of Pana in Christian County. In addition, high rainfall rates associated with the storms combined with rapid snow-melt to produce widespread flash flooding, mainly east of the I-55 corridor.

A tornado touched down in an open field 4 miles west-southwest of Shumway at 4:54 PM CST. The tornado tracked northeastward, crossing state highway 33 between Shumway and Beecher City. The tornado snapped several power poles as it crossed the highway before dissipating in an open field 3 miles west-northwest of Shumway at 4:56 PM CST.

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

7 minutes of warning. NWS ILX issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:47 UTC, 7 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 22:46 UTC and running to 01:04 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 19:37 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), 120 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:53 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 2014 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are

33 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.