EF1 tornado, Rossville Jct, Illinois, May 26, 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

May 26, 2017

Touchdown

5:53 PM CDT (22:53 UTC)

Lifted

5:54 PM CDT (22:54 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$45,000

County

Vermilion County

Touchdown point

40.330, -87.639

Lift-off point

40.328, -87.634

Record number

1705261653-01

6 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 88 mph.

• Siding torn off of one side of garage.
• Damage to siding on house, gutters and a couple of broken windows.
• Large tree braches broken.
• Large tree branches broken.

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

Supercell thunderstorms developed in the vicinity of a warm front draped along the I-74 corridor during the afternoon and early evening of May 26th. The hardest hit area was northern Vermilion County...where powerful cells produced a tornado, damaging winds, and extremely large hail. An EF-1 tornado touched down northwest of Alvin, damaging trees, the roof and siding of a house, and a garage. Meanwhile, 80-90mph winds produced nearly $3 million worth of tree and property damage in Rossville. Very large hail up to the size of tennis balls were reported in Rankin. In addition, extreme rainfall rates caused flash flooding in Hoopeston.

A tornado touched down at 5:53PM CDT 2.2 miles northwest of Alvin. It tracked southeastward and quickly dissipated by 5:54PM CDT. The tornado snapped a tree, did minor damage to the roof and siding of a house, broke an attic window, and blew the siding off a garage.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 19:47 UTC and running to 01:00 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:00 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 Indianapolis radar (KIND), 135 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:50 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

6 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.