EF0 tornado, Bondville to Leverett, Illinois, February 27, 2023

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

February 27, 2023

Touchdown

8:43 AM CST (14:43 UTC)

Lifted

8:44 AM CST (14:44 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

1.1 miles (1.8 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Champaign County

Touchdown point

40.097, -88.356

Lift-off point

40.112, -88.346

Record number

2302270843-01

3 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 80 mph.

• Spotters provided video of the tornado touchdown around 1 mile SE of Bondville. No damage reported.
• Spotters provided video and photo evidence of the tornado touching down in an open field between I-57 and E Ford Harris Rd. No damage reported.
• Some outbuilding damage occurred at a farm at 1003 S. Barker Rd shortly after the tornado touched down. A barn door was blown off and one building was split at a corner.

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

An unseasonably warm and humid airmass surged northward into east-central Illinois ahead of an approaching cold front during the morning of February 27th. Temperatures climbed into the lower to middle 60s while dewpoints reached the upper 50s...producing surface-based CAPE values of 100-200J/kg. Despite only modest instability, low-level wind shear became quite robust in advance of a short-wave trough. As a result, a line of thunderstorms with embedded mini-supercells developed ahead of the cold front before quickly tracking into Indiana by early afternoon. One of the cells produced 2 brief tornado touchdowns in western Champaign County. Other storms dropped hail as large as ping-pong balls across Champaign County.

A tornado touched down in an open field 1 mile southeast of Bondville at 8:43 AM CST. It tracked northeastward, doing minor damage to a farm outbuilding on South Baker Road before quickly dissipating just south of Springfield Avenue 1 mile east-southeast of Bondville at 8:44 AM CST.

A tornado touched down in an open field between I-57 and West Ford Harris Road about 5 miles northwest of Urbana at 8:55 AM CST. It tracked northeastward and crossed I-57 at exit number 240 before quickly dissipating just east of the exit at 8:56 AM CST. No damage was reported.

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.

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 12:57 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), 84 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 14:41 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 2023 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.