EF1 tornado, Troster, Illinois, January 3, 2023

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

January 3, 2023

Touchdown

5:38 PM CST (23:38 UTC)

Lifted

5:42 PM CST (23:42 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.7 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

McLean County

Touchdown point

40.320, -88.481

Lift-off point

40.324, -88.474

Record number

2301031738-01

4 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ILX and NWS LOT, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 110 mph.

• Shingle damage with broken windows and wood post through roof.
• Estimated starting point of tornado. Damage indicators do not extend back to Route 47.

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

An area of low pressure tracking northeastward across Iowa pushed a cold front into central Illinois during the afternoon of January 3rd. The arimass ahead of the front became moderately unstable thanks to surface temperatures climbing into the lower to middle 60s and dewpoints hovering near 60 degrees. Given the instability and increasing amounts of deep-layer wind shear in association with a strong upper low approaching from the west, scattered supercell thunderstorms developed along the front during the afternoon. The storms were primarily focused in a corridor from Springfield and Taylorville northeastward to near Champaign. A total of 8 short-lived weak tornadoes touched down within this corridor, with the strongest tornadoes producing EF-1 damage near Maroa and in the Decatur area.

A tornado touched down just southwest of a farmstead about 3 miles southeast of Bellflower at 5:38 PM CST. The tornado moved northeastward, destroying a farm outbuilding and splattering dirt and grass on the east-facing side of a house. Debris from the outbuilding was blown northeast for about one quarter of a mile. The homeowner watched the tornado cross North 4100 East Road southwest of their property. The tornado dissipated 3 miles east-southeast of Bellflower at 5:42 PM CST.

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

1 minute of warning. NWS ILX issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:37 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:50 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 19:35 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), 75 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:36 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 2023 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are

25 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.