EF0 tornado, Fairfield, Illinois, June 23, 2014

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

June 23, 2014

Touchdown

5:22 PM CDT (22:22 UTC)

Lifted

5:28 PM CDT (22:28 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

2.9 miles (4.7 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$2,000

County

Wayne County

Touchdown point

38.358, -88.438

Lift-off point

38.367, -88.386

Record number

1406231622-01

19 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 100 mph.

• Adjacent large tree down to the northeast.
• Numerous branches, some large, broken in small forested area.

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

Scattered thunderstorms occurred ahead of a cold front that extended from central Illinois southwest across the St. Louis metro area to western Arkansas. A small cluster of storms in Wayne County produced a couple of tornadoes and damaging straight-line winds.

This widely photographed and videotaped tornado caused very little damage. Much of its track was over open fields. Where the tornado crossed tree lines, tree limbs were broken. The tornado began southeast of the intersection of Illinois Highway 15 and County Road 10. The tornado travelled east-northeast before curving southeast as it approached the southwest side of Fairfield. Peak winds were estimated near 75 mph.

Near the beginning of the tornado track, just southwest of the intersection of County Road 1650E and County Road 700N, the tornado downed a tree onto a house. There was some structural damage to the house. Otherwise, this videotaped tornado tracked across mostly open fields. There was some disturbance to corn fields as it tracked southeast toward County Road 1800E. Peak winds 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.

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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:45 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.

Fairfield (FWC), 2 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Evansville,IN radar (KVWX), 61 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:22 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

4 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.