EF0 tornado, Du Quoin, Illinois, November 18, 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

November 18, 2017

Touchdown

12:15 PM CST (18:15 UTC)

Lifted

12:16 PM CST (18:16 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.7 miles (1.1 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$250,000

County

Perry County

Touchdown point

38.018, -89.239

Lift-off point

38.020, -89.226

Record number

1711181215-01

6 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 75 mph.

• Loss of shingles at residence

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

A broken line of thunderstorms formed along a cold front as it surged southeast from Missouri into the lower Ohio Valley. A large pocket of clear sky during the morning helped warm the lower levels of the atmosphere. Instability became sufficient for storms to fire right along the front, where a rather strong capping inversion was broken. A vigorous upper-level trough moving rapidly eastward across the central Plains provided plenty of large-scale forcing for storm initiation. Very strong wind shear was supportive of isolated tornadoes along the evolving quasi-linear convective system. Scattered damaging wind gusts accompanied the leading edge of the activity.

The EF-0 tornado touched down just north of the downtown business district and tracked east through a residential area. Eyewitness reports of the tornado were obtained. The maximum estimated wind speed was 65 mph. Numerous homes and businesses sustained shingle and siding damage. A large tree fell onto a home. Hundreds of tree limbs were down, damaging several vehicles. Widespread power outages occurred. A power pole was snapped. A dozen mobile homes were damaged, including a mobile home that was moved off its foundation. The mobile home was not tied down.

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 severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 17:05 UTC and running to 19:06 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:22 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), 113 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:16 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.

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

15 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.