EF0 tornado, Emden, Illinois, September 29, 2019

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

September 29, 2019

Touchdown

4:18 PM CDT (21:18 UTC)

Lifted

4:26 PM CDT (21:26 UTC)

On the ground

8 minutes

Path length

2.7 miles (4.4 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Crop damage

$20,000

County

Logan County

Touchdown point

40.307, -89.517

Lift-off point

40.302, -89.465

Record number

1909291518-01

5 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ILX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 70 mph.

• branches broken out of tree.
• Tornado crossed north of Emden

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

A warm front brought a summer-like airmass northward into central Illinois on September 29th as afternoon high temperatures topped out in the middle to upper 80s along and south of the I-72 corridor. Widely scattered supercell thunderstorms developed along the front during the afternoon and early evening...with one long-lived cell producing hail as large as tennis balls in northern Fulton County and an EF-0 tornado in far northern Logan County.

A tornado touched down in an open field along US-136 1.8 miles west-northwest of Emden at 4:18 PM CDT. The tornado initially tracked nearly parallel to US-136 damaging tree limbs and crops, then turned to the east-southeast and passed about one quarter mile north of the village of Emden before dissipating in a field 1.1 miles east-northeast of Emden at 4:26 PM CDT.

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

31 minutes of warning. NWS ILX issued a tornado warning for this county at 20:47 UTC, 31 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 21:30 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, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:46 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.

Lincoln (AAA), 21 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Lincoln radar (KILX), 22 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:14 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

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.