EF1 tornado, Knapp to Riddle Hill, Illinois, March 15, 2016

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

March 15, 2016

Touchdown

7:44 PM CDT (00:44 UTC)

Lifted

7:50 PM CDT (00:50 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

3.6 miles (5.8 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$280,000

County

Sangamon County

Touchdown point

39.740, -89.815

Lift-off point

39.774, -89.763

Record number

1603151844-01

40 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ILX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 107 mph.

• Tree snapped about 10 ft off ground
• About 1/3 of west wall missing
• One branch snapped. Another tree appears broken but unhealthy.
• Gouge marks on east side. No real damage to east side of building.

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

An area of low pressure deepened considerably as it tracked from northeast Missouri into southern Wisconsin on March 15th. While the airmass ahead of this system across central Illinois remained capped for much of the day, an approaching upper trough helped weaken the cap and set the stage for scattered severe thunderstorms ahead of an approaching cold front during the evening of the 15th. Several clusters of thunderstorms moved across west-central Illinois, mainly along and west of I-55. The first cluster tracked from just north of Quincy toward the Peoria area, while a second cluster impacted locations from Jacksonville to Springfield. Thanks to moderate instability and strong low-level wind shear near the low track, many of the storms rotated and produced large hail and tornadoes. A total of 4 tornadoes touched down, including an EF-2 just northwest of Trivoli in Peoria County.

A tornado touched down 2.4 miles west of Curran along Werner Road about three quarters of a mile west of the intersection with Farmingdale Road at 7:44 PM CDT. The roof of a home lost some shingles and a few pine trees were broken off in this area. The tornado tracked across mainly open fields and crossed I-72 just east of Farmingdale Road at 7:45 PM CDT. The tornado continued northeastward and damaged a house along Bunker Hill Road, blowing out windows, removing shingles, and breaking several trees. It then caused minor shingle damage to a home along Emerson Road about a quarter mile south of Iles Avenue. Further northeast, the tornado caused significant damage to a home along Iles Avenue about a half mile east of the intersection with Emerson Road, removing most of the roof and blowing out a wall on the west side of the structure. Across the street, a barn lost its roof and several trees were snapped off. The tornado then dissipated in an open field 6.6 miles west-southwest of Springfield at 7:50 PM CDT.

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

18 minutes of warning. NWS ILX issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:26 UTC, 18 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:31 UTC and running to 03:10 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. 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.

The Lincoln radar (KILX), 58 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:44 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 2016 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are

10 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.