EF1 tornado, Kewanee Muni Arpt to Kewanee, Illinois, July 15, 2024

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

July 15, 2024

Touchdown

8:02 PM CDT (01:02 UTC)

Lifted

8:09 PM CDT (01:09 UTC)

On the ground

7 minutes

Path length

5.2 miles (8.4 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$100,000

Crop damage

$100,000

County

Henry County

Touchdown point

41.230, -89.990

Lift-off point

41.240, -89.890

Record number

2407151902-01

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

• Farm outbuildings damaged or destroyed.

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

Thunderstorms rapidly developed over northern Iowa during the afternoon and organized into a powerful line of wind producing storms that surged through the Quad Cities and into northern and central Illinois through the evening hours. These storms brought widespread damaging winds up to 100 mph for many locations, extending across eastern Iowa, much of Illinois, and into Indiana. The Storm Prediction Center has classified this event as a Derecho which by definition is a swath of wind damage at least 400 miles long and at least 60 miles wide including several well-separated significant wind gusts over 75 mph. Corridors of significant wind damage occurred along Highway 20. 10 tornadoes also occurred with these storms in the NWS Quad Cities service area. ||In addition to the wind, very heavy rainfall fell in a short amount of time with many locations seeing over an inch. The highest totals fell in McDonough and Warren counties in Illinois where amounts between 2 and 3 inches fell.

An NWS Storm Survey found that an EF-1 tornado with peak winds of 100 MPH and was 200 yards wide caused extensive tree damage occurred through the city of Kewanee. Many homesteads had minor roof damage. A couple of the homes had large sections of the roofs removed.

An NWS Storm Survey found a second tornado in Kewanee. The tornado was 50 yards wide with peak winds of 105 MPH, which caused damage on the north side of Kewanee. Damage was noted to several large trees including large ones snapped in a park and golf course. There was also some roof damage to a couple of businesses and a storage building.

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

20 minutes of warning. NWS DVN issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:42 UTC, 20 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 23:53 UTC and running to 01:50 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:47 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.

Lacon (C75), 52 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Quad Cities radar (KDVN), 68 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:59 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

61 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 62 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.