EF0 tornado, Goodrich to Whitaker, Illinois, April 2, 2024

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

April 2, 2024

Touchdown

2:02 PM CDT (19:02 UTC)

Lifted

2:08 PM CDT (19:08 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

4.6 miles (7.4 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Kankakee County

Touchdown point

41.084, -88.060

Lift-off point

41.137, -88.007

Record number

2404021302-01

12 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LOT, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EFU. The highest wind the damage implies is 75 mph.

• Garbage can blown over to the east at end of driveway.
• Debris deposited into field
• Power pole snapped. Quality of pole suggests it may have been partially rotted. Likely was pulled down by poles to the east.
• Power pole snapped. Quality of pole suggests it may have been partially rotted. Also may have been pulled down by poles to the east.

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

On the afternoon of the 2nd, a line of thunderstorms produced three weak, short-lived tornadoes over parts of Kankakee County.

A tornado touched down northeast of Herscher and tracked northeastward for about 4-5 miles, damaging trees and barns and also tossing a grain silo into a field, before lifting for good west of Limestone.

Several photos and videos were taken of a narrow, rope-like tornado tracking across fields along Vansiding Road south of Limestone. Eyewitness accounts indicate that this tornado was on the ground for no more than one minute. With no known damage caused by this tornado, it had been assigned the EF-Unknown (EF-U) rating.

A brief tornado touched down near N 6000E Rd and E 9000N Rd east of Manteno. The tornado downed a few power poles as it crossed E 9000N Rd and partially destroyed a poorly constructed metal wastewater treatment building in the same location, depositing debris from the building into the field to the northeast of it. The tornado then lifted as it passed over this field.

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.

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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 16:22 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.

Kankakee (IKK), 16 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Chicago radar (KLOT), 55 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:02 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 2024 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are

68 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 69 of them

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.