Tornadoes · United States · Illinois · 2023
EF0 tornado, DuPage County, Illinois, July 12, 2023
This EF0 tornado ran 2.9 miles across DuPage County on July 12, 2023, touching down at 6:44 PM CDT and reaching 125 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- EF0
- Date
- July 12, 2023
- Touchdown
- 6:44 PM CDT (23:44 UTC)
- Lifted
- 6:50 PM CDT (23:50 UTC)
- On the ground
- 6 minutes
- Path length
- 2.9 miles (4.6 km)
- Path width
- 125 yards (114 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- DuPage County
- Touchdown point
- 41.927, -88.141
- Lift-off point
- 41.918, -88.086
- Record number
- 2307121744-01
The damage survey
147 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LOT, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 105 mph.
- Couple of trees uprooted and another was snapped.
- Large uprooted hardwood trees in the area.
- Outer edge of leaf debris, twigs
- Potential south edge of the track.
Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.
The air that afternoon
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.
Davenport, (KDVN), 12:00Z
11.7 hours before the tornado, 201 km from the path. July 12, 2023.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 9 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -301 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 936 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 33 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 11 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 48 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 252 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.4
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 3.9 K/km
The surface observations
Chicago - Schaumburg (06C), 8 km from the path, in the two hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Temp (°F) | Dew point (°F) | Wind | Gust (kt) | Pressure (mb) | Weather |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.
The radar
The Chicago radar (KLOT), 35 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:43 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.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2023 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of July 12, 2023
23 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 12 | 3:43 AM CDT | EF1 | Lafayette, AR | 2.8 | 350 | $15,000 | ||
| July 12 | 5:14 AM CDT | EF1 | Colfax, NE | 0.3 | 50 | |||
| July 12 | 5:20 AM CDT | EF1 | Cuming, NE | 0.5 | 90 | |||
| July 12 | 5:37 AM CDT | EF0 | Burt, NE | 1.1 | 15 | |||
| July 12 | 6:05 AM CDT | EF2 | Harrison, IA | 9.4 | 100 | |||
| July 12 | 6:17 AM CDT | EF1 | Shelby, IA | 0.5 | 50 | |||
| July 12 | 6:28 AM CDT | EF1 | Pottawattamie, IA | 1.5 | 40 | |||
| July 12 | 6:32 AM CDT | EF0 | Pottawattamie, IA | 0.9 | 40 | |||
| July 12 | 6:38 AM CDT | EF0 | Cass, IA | 1.5 | 50 | |||
| July 12 | 6:39 AM CDT | EF0 | Cass, IA | 2.1 | 75 | $5,000 | ||
| July 12 | 5:25 PM CDT | EF0 | Boone, IL | 2.5 | 175 | |||
| July 12 | 5:36 PM CDT | EF0 | Kendall, IL | 4.1 | 100 | |||
| July 12 | 6:06 PM CDT | EF1 | McHenry, IL | 6.4 | 200 | |||
| July 12 | 6:09 PM CDT | EF1 | DuPage, IL | 9.1 | 150 | 1 | ||
| July 12 | 6:16 PM CDT | EF1 | Kane, IL | 10.9 | 440 | |||
| July 12 | 6:18 PM CDT | EF0 | Kane, IL | 2.6 | 100 | |||
| July 12 | 6:33 PM CDT | EF0 | McHenry, IL | 3.4 | 125 | |||
| July 12 | 6:41 PM CDT | EF0 | Cook, IL | 0.5 | 80 | |||
| July 12 | 6:43 PM CDT | EF0 | Cook, IL | 1.1 | 80 | |||
| July 12 | 6:52 PM CDT | EF0 | Lake, IL | 2.1 | 125 | |||
| July 12 | 6:54 PM CDT | EF0 | DuPage, IL | 3.4 | 225 | |||
| July 12 | 7:02 PM CDT | EF0 | Cook, IL | 3.4 | 300 | |||
| July 12 | 11:09 PM EDT | EF1 | Saint Joseph, MI | 2.9 | 50 | $50,000 |
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.