EF1 tornado, Lincoln to Hartsburg, Illinois, May 22, 2019

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 22, 2019

Touchdown

12:33 AM CDT (05:33 UTC)

Lifted

12:37 AM CDT (05:37 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

2.7 miles (4.3 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Logan County

Touchdown point

40.172, -89.393

Lift-off point

40.211, -89.385

Record number

1905222333-01

8 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 90 mph.

• Barn roof severly damaged. Three grain bins thrown to the NNE - one into the house and two onto the railroad tracks.
• House roof damaged on south side of building.
• Large horse trailer thrown into outbuilding.
• Large branches torn off of the tops of trees. Numerous pieces of metal debris lofted into trees.

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

A strong cold front interacting with a moderately unstable and sheared environment triggered several lines of strong to severe thunderstorms during the late evening of May 22nd into the pre-dawn hours of May 23rd. Five tornadoes developed along the leading edge of the storms, including an EF-1 tornado that caused minor damage across portions of Sangamon, Menard, and Logan counties. Hail up to the size of golf balls was reported west of the I-55 corridor in Mason County before the event transitioned to primarily damaging wind gusts of 60-70mph as the storms pushed eastward to the Indiana border.

A tornado touched down just west of Kickapoo Creek County Park on the north side of Lincoln at 12:33 AM CDT. The tornado tracked northeastward, damaging numerous trees, farm outbuildings, and one house roof before dissipating 4.6 miles north-northwest of Lincoln at 12:37 AM CDT.

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

8 minutes of warning. NWS ILX issued a tornado warning for this county at 05:25 UTC, 8 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 05:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 03:28 UTC and running to 07:11 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 00:57 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), 6 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 05:36 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 2019 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are

34 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.