EF1 tornado, Muncie, Illinois, May 23, 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 23, 2019

Touchdown

2:06 AM CDT (07:06 UTC)

Lifted

2:08 AM CDT (07:08 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.6 miles (2.5 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Vermilion County

Touchdown point

40.113, -87.855

Lift-off point

40.125, -87.830

Record number

1905230106-01

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 100 mph.

• Large tree branches broken in Muncie.
• Semi-truck blown over on I-74.

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 1 mile east of Fithian at 2:06 AM CDT. The tornado tracked northeastward through the community of Muncie, damaging numerous trees and snapping power poles. A house was damaged when a tree fell onto it, and a semi was blown off I-74. The tornado dissipated 1 mile northeast of Muncie at 2:08 AM CDT.

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 03:28 UTC and running to 09:28 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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 06:07 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), 127 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 07:06 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

18 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.