EF0 tornado, Catlin to (Dnv)Vermlion Apt Da, Illinois, September 9, 2016

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

September 9, 2016

Touchdown

6:13 PM CDT (23:13 UTC)

Lifted

6:14 PM CDT (23:14 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Crop damage

$10,000

County

Vermilion County

Touchdown point

40.045, -87.728

Lift-off point

40.045, -87.726

Record number

1609091713-01

18 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ILX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 125 mph.

• large two story house built in 1890 shifted off foundation and collapsed.
• Trees snapped off at cemetery. Many gravestones toppled.
• garage and outbuilding destroyed.
• Tornado dissipated in field about 1/4-1/2 mile north of this point.

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

Scattered severe thunderstorms developed along a warm front extending across central Illinois during the late afternoon and evening of September 9th. A Mesoscale Convective Vortex (MCV) associated with a complex of thunderstorms that had developed the previous night across Kansas interacted with the boundary to greatly enhance low-level wind shear across east-central Illinois. As new thunderstorm cells developed and moved into this area of stronger shear, many of them began to rotate. Four tornadoes touched down across portions of Champaign, Vermilion, and Clark counties between 6:30pm CDT and 7:15pm CDT, including an EF-2 tornado that produced considerable damage across southern Champaign County.

A tornado briefly touched down in a field 2 miles southwest of Catlin at 7:13pm CDT before quickly dissipating by 7:14pm CDT. Minor crop damage was reported.

A tornado touched down 3.6 miles southwest of Bismarck at 6:34pm CDT, then tracked northeastward for 1.6 miles mostly across open fields. The tornado damaged a few trees, took shingles off the roof of a house, and blew a camper over before dissipating 2.3 miles south-southwest of Bismarck at 6:43pm CDT.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:35 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.

Danville (DNV), 20 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Indianapolis radar (KIND), 129 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:12 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

5 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.