EF1 tornado, Easton to Forest City, Illinois, March 6, 2017

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 6, 2017

Touchdown

11:52 PM CST (05:52 UTC)

Lifted

11:57 PM CST (05:57 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

6.8 miles (10.9 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$150,000

County

Mason County

Touchdown point

40.263, -89.856

Lift-off point

40.318, -89.750

Record number

1703062352-01

63 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 113 mph.

• Debris from grain bins that were destroyed.
• Irrigation unit tipped over
• Tree broken about 50 feet up
• Part of irrigation unit toppled

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

A strong cold front triggered a squall line across western Iowa into eastern Kansas during the afternoon of March 6th. These storms raced eastward and reached west-central Illinois by the late evening, then pushed across the remainder of central Illinois during the early morning hours of March 7th. The storms produced widespread wind gusts of 50-70 mph and 3 tornadoes. One tornado touched down near Easton in Mason County, while two tornadoes occurred further east in Tazewell County. The most significant tornado caused EF-2 damage in rural Tazewell County just northeast of Delavan.

A tornado touched down 2.2 miles north-northwest of Easton at 11:52 PM CST. The tornado tracked northeastward, hitting a homestead 2.5 miles north of Easton where a machine shed was severely damaged, with most of its roof removed and part of the north wall bowed out. From here to the end of the track, most of the damage was to power poles or overturned irrigation rigs: however, a farm along County Road 2930E received damage as well. A grain silo had half its peaked roof cave in, and part of a machine shed had a couple smaller wall pieces blown out. The tornado dissipated 5.5 miles southeast of Forest City at 11:57 PM CST.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 02:52 UTC and running to 07:24 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:54 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), 43 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 05:50 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

53 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.