EF1 tornado, Merriam to Golden Gate, Illinois, March 14, 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

March 14, 2024

Touchdown

8:11 PM CDT (01:11 UTC)

Lifted

8:15 PM CDT (01:15 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

2.8 miles (4.5 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$120,000

County

Wayne County

Touchdown point

38.408, -88.282

Lift-off point

38.416, -88.232

Record number

2403141911-01

14 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 90 mph.

• Lots of soffit damage and damage to the underside of the porch. Many snapped pine trees, halfway up
• No damage noticed on either side of the road due to harvested crops, but a swath of tree snapped in forest to the west of the road
• House with half of roof tarped due to damage.

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

A cold front, which stretched from Oklahoma to Central Illinois over to Northern Ohio, progressed slowly through the Quad State region, with an MCS moving through during the evening hours. An early afternoon SGF sounding placed MLCAPE at around 2000 J/kg. Deep layer shear was 50-55 kts with 0-1 km shear of 30 kts with 200 m2/s2 SRH. In Southern Illinois, there were two lines that developed. The southern line had a more SW to NE orientation further south and was weaker than portions further south in SE Missouri and far W Kentucky. The northern line had a more west to east orientation near the I-64 corridor and was much more active. Jefferson County in particular had severe damaging wind reports, large hail, and a brief EF-1 tornado north of Mount Vernon which did significant damage to a bus depot and several of the buses inside. A microburst developed just east of that tornado, scattering debris from a metal building system. A second EF-1 tornado occurred in Wayne County northeast of Fairfield, snapping many pine trees, and causing a mobile home to lean over. Additional wind damage reports were received along the I-64 corridor.

Numerous pine trees snapped near the base along the track northeast of Fairfield. One home near the beginning of the track had roof damage (a tarp covered half of the roof) with a nearby tree having many large branches broken. Further east, an anchored mobile home was lifted up and leaned over, not overturned but uninhabitable due to sustained major damage. Another home further ENE had substantial soffit and porch damage along with an old TV tower toppled and many snapped pine trees on the property. Peak winds were estimated at 90 mph.

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

23 minutes of warning. NWS PAH issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:48 UTC, 23 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 18:39 UTC and running to 02:00 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:51 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.

Fairfield (FWC), 14 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Evansville,IN radar (KVWX), 49 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:11 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

24 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.