Tornadoes · United States · Illinois · 2017

EF1 tornado, Fulton, Illinois, July 21, 2017

Name: EF1 tornado, Fulton, Illinois, July 21, 2017
Start: 2017-07-22T00:19:00.000Z
End: 2017-07-22T00:26:00.000Z
Location: Fulton, Illinois

This EF1 tornado ran 3.7 miles across Whiteside County on July 21, 2017, touching down at 7:19 PM CDT and reaching 150 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $40,000 of property damage.

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: July 21, 2017
Touchdown: 7:19 PM CDT (00:19 UTC)
Lifted: 7:26 PM CDT (00:26 UTC)
On the ground: 7 minutes
Path length: 3.7 miles (6.0 km)
Path width: 150 yards (137 m)
Deaths: 0
Injuries: 0
Property damage: $40,000
Crop damage: $2,000
County: Whiteside County
Touchdown point: 41.872, -90.167
Lift-off point: 41.897, -90.102
Record number: 1707211819-01

What the Weather Service recorded

A long duration convective event along a stalled boundary occurred. This resulted in a major heavy rain and flooding event from 3 to over 8 inches of rain falling. Some storms become severe with damaging winds over 60 mph and isolated large hail.

Tornado was rated an EF-1 which touched down on the eastern shore of the Mississippi River and hit the city of Fulton Illinois. The tornado tracked east northeast and caused damage to mainly trees and a cemetery along its 3.7 mile path and max width of 150 yards. Two garages and one farm outbuilding, and some corn were also damaged.

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

The warnings

1 minute of warning. NWS DVN issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:18 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:00 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 21:54 UTC and running to 07:00 UTC.

Issued (UTC)	Expired	Product	Office
12:46 UTC	23:50 UTC	Flood Warning	DVN
21:00 UTC	13:32 UTC	Flash Flood Watch	DVN
21:54 UTC	07:00 UTC	Severe Thunderstorm Watch	DVN
00:18 UTC	01:00 UTC	Tornado Warning	DVN
00:23 UTC	00:45 UTC	Tornado Warning	DVN
00:33 UTC	01:30 UTC	Severe Thunderstorm Warning	DVN
02:06 UTC	06:00 UTC	Flash Flood Warning	DVN
03:00 UTC	21:19 UTC	Flood Watch	DVN
06:00 UTC	21:19 UTC	Flood Watch	DVN
17:20 UTC	04:38 UTC	Flood Warning	DVN

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 forecast that day

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Enhanced Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:52 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 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.

Davenport, (KDVN), 12:00Z

11.7 hours after it, 42 km from the path. July 22, 2017.

Skew-T log-p

Temperature in red, dew point in green, the mixed-layer parcel dashed. The warm shading is its CAPE, the cool shading the inhibition it has to break through.

Hodograph

The wind turning with height, colored by layer: ground to 1 km, 1 to 3 km, 3 to 6 km, 6 to 10 km. RM and LM are the right and left moving storms Bunkers' method gives; the shaded area is the 0 to 1 km storm-relative helicity.

Mixed-layer CAPE: 0 J/kg
Mixed-layer CIN: -81318 J/kg
Surface CAPE: 0 J/kg
Mixed-layer LCL: 1642 m above ground
0-6 km bulk shear: 62 kt
0-1 km bulk shear: 12 kt
0-1 km storm-relative helicity: 87 m²/s²
0-3 km storm-relative helicity: 167 m²/s²
Significant tornado parameter: 0.0
Supercell composite: 0.0
0-3 km lapse rate: 2.8 K/km

Open this sounding in Storm Lab

The radar

The Quad Cities radar (KDVN), 48 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:16 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.

What was reported nearby

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

Time (UTC)	Report	Where	County	Remark
23:32 UTC	TSTM WND DMG	2 Se Freeport	Stephenson, IL	TREE BRANCH BROKE IN THE WIND AND BROUGHT DOWN A POWERLINE.
23:34 UTC	HAIL 0.25	1 E Freeport	Stephenson, IL
23:38 UTC	HEAVY RAIN 1	Thomson	Carroll, IL
00:19 UTC	TORNADO 1	1 N Fulton	Whiteside, IL	EF1 TORNADO TOUCHED DOWN ON THE EASTERN SHORE OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AND HIT THE CITY OF FULTON, IL. THE TORNADO TRACKED ENE CAUSING DAMAGE MAINLY TO TREES ALONG ITS 3.7 MILE LONG PATH. NUMEROUS TREES WERE SNAPPED OR U
00:20 UTC	TSTM WND DMG	Milan	Rock Island, IL	2 TO 4 INCH TREE LIMBS DOWN. TIME OF THE EVENT WAS ESTIMATED BY RADAR
00:21 UTC	TSTM WND DMG	Fulton	Whiteside, IL	TREES ARE DOWN ACROSS THE TOWN OF FULTON.
00:24 UTC	TSTM WND DMG	2 Ne Fulton	Whiteside, IL	BARN BLOWN DOWN.
00:25 UTC	TSTM WND GST 71	Moline Quad-City Airpor	Rock Island, IL
00:34 UTC	TSTM WND DMG	Se Moline	Rock Island, IL	2 TO 4 INCH TREE LIMBS DOWN. TIME OF THE EVENT WAS ESTIMATED FROM RADAR.
00:48 UTC	TSTM WND DMG	Milledgeville	Carroll, IL	PUBLIC REPORTED 3 INCH DIAMETER TREE BRANCES DOWN FROM THE STORM
01:08 UTC	HEAVY RAIN 2	3 Nne Stockton	Jo Daviess, IL	RAIN CAME IN TWO SEPARATE STORMS THIS EVENING.
01:46 UTC	HEAVY RAIN 1.66	Sw Stockton	Jo Daviess, IL
02:00 UTC	FLASH FLOOD	Pearl City	Stephenson, IL	ROUTE 73 NEAR PEARL CITY FLOODED. TIME ESTIMATED.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

This ground now

The live radar over the track Every 2017 tornado in Illinois Every tornado in Illinois since 1950 Warnings in force in Illinois now The forecast where you are

The other tornadoes of July 21, 2017

5 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

Date	Time	Rating	Where	Path (mi)	Width (yd)	Damage
July 21	3:45 PM CDT	EF1	Beltrami, MN	2.8	200	$100,000
July 21	5:34 PM CDT	EF0	Clay, MN	0.4	100
July 21	5:44 PM CDT	EF0	Johnson, IA	0.1	10
July 21	5:52 PM CDT	EF0	Cheyenne, KS	0.0	400
July 21	8:50 PM CDT	EF0	Oliver, ND	0.2	25

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.