EF0 tornado, Etherton to Barr, Illinois, March 1, 2017

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

March 1, 2017

Touchdown

4:08 AM CST (10:08 UTC)

Lifted

4:13 AM CST (10:13 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

4.1 miles (6.6 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$2,000

County

Jackson County

Touchdown point

37.701, -89.371

Lift-off point

37.716, -89.298

Record number

1703010408-01

60 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF3. The highest wind the damage implies is 145 mph.

• trees snapped. windows blown out. roofing material removed.
• two homes lost roof. trees snapped.
• width 100 yards with debris from sports complex noted here
• many trees snapped in swamp area leading northeast into a field.

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

An organized area of thunderstorms moved through southern Illinois during the pre-dawn hours. Along the leading edge of this area, there were isolated damaging wind gusts and a weak tornado. The exception was along the Ohio River in Massac County, which was impacted by the northern end of a squall line that produced widespread wind damage in western Kentucky. In addition, there were a few reports of hail from dime to quarter-size. The storms occurred ahead of an upper-level trough advancing east of the Plains states. The storms were focused along and ahead of a cold front, in a moist and rather unstable air mass.

This weak tornado began in the Shawnee National Forest and ended four miles west of Carbondale. Peak winds were estimated near 75 mph. The tornado skipped along the path, taking down large tree branches and uprooting a few trees.

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

2 minutes of warning. NWS PAH issued a tornado warning for this county at 10:06 UTC, 2 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 10:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 02:31 UTC and running to 14:00 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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:42 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 Paducah radar (KPAH), 87 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 10:08 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 2017 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are

38 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.