Tornadoes · United States · Illinois · 2016
EF1 tornado, LaSalle County, Illinois, June 22, 2016
This EF1 tornado ran 4.5 miles across LaSalle County on June 22, 2016, touching down at 8:48 PM CDT and reaching 100 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- EF1
- Date
- June 22, 2016
- Touchdown
- 8:48 PM CDT (01:48 UTC)
- Lifted
- 8:53 PM CDT (01:53 UTC)
- On the ground
- 5 minutes
- Path length
- 4.5 miles (7.2 km)
- Path width
- 100 yards (91 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- LaSalle County
- Touchdown point
- 41.412, -88.850
- Lift-off point
- 41.381, -88.773
- Record number
- 1606221948-01
The damage survey
80 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ABR and NWS ILX and NWS LOT, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 120 mph.
- four toppled or crumpled. preliminary
- Four trusses toppled or crumpled, one partially. preliminary.
- loss of roof. minor other damage.
- beginning area of north of Ottawa tornado
Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.
The air that afternoon
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.
Lincoln, IL (KILX), 00:00Z
1.8 hours before the tornado, 140 km from the path. June 23, 2016.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 2491 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -11 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 6265 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1597 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 46 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 23 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 170 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 406 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 2.1
- Supercell composite
- 41.8
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.1 K/km
The surface observations
Peru (VYS), 29 km from the path, in the two hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Temp (°F) | Dew point (°F) | Wind | Gust (kt) | Pressure (mb) | Weather |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.
The radar
The Chicago radar (KLOT), 65 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:48 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.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2016 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of June 22, 2016
19 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 22 | 7:19 PM CDT | EF1 | Lee, IL | 4.1 | 300 | |||
| June 22 | 7:31 PM CDT | EF0 | Lee, IL | 0.1 | 50 | |||
| June 22 | 7:40 PM CDT | EF0 | Bureau, IL | 0.6 | 25 | |||
| June 22 | 7:59 PM CDT | EF0 | LaSalle, IL | 0.3 | 75 | |||
| June 22 | 7:59 PM CDT | EF1 | LaSalle, IL | 4.3 | 400 | |||
| June 22 | 8:02 PM CDT | EF1 | LaSalle, IL | 1.4 | 250 | |||
| June 22 | 8:04 PM CDT | EF0 | Bureau, IL | 0.3 | 10 | |||
| June 22 | 8:11 PM CDT | EF1 | LaSalle, IL | 0.5 | 50 | |||
| June 22 | 8:22 PM CDT | EF1 | LaSalle, IL | 1.7 | 250 | |||
| June 22 | 8:32 PM CDT | EF1 | LaSalle, IL | 0.5 | 50 | |||
| June 22 | 8:35 PM CDT | EF1 | Bureau, IL | 0.5 | 50 | |||
| June 22 | 8:53 PM CDT | EF2 | LaSalle, IL | 8.1 | 300 | |||
| June 22 | 9:29 PM CDT | EF0 | Grundy, IL | 0.7 | 100 | |||
| June 22 | 10:06 PM CDT | EF2 | Livingston, IL | 11.1 | 440 | 4 | ||
| June 22 | 10:12 PM CDT | EF1 | Iroquois, IL | 1.7 | 50 | |||
| June 22 | 10:49 PM CDT | EF0 | Livingston, IL | 0.1 | 10 | |||
| June 22 | 11:37 PM CDT | EF1 | Iroquois, IL | 3.1 | 440 | |||
| June 22 | 12:51 AM EDT | EF1 | Huntington, IN | 2.4 | 200 | |||
| June 22 | 12:57 AM EDT | EF2 | Huntington, IN | 2.4 | 300 |
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.