EF1 tornado, Sumner to Bridgeport, Illinois, May 26, 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

May 26, 2024

Touchdown

8:27 PM CDT (01:27 UTC)

Lifted

8:37 PM CDT (01:37 UTC)

On the ground

10 minutes

Path length

6.8 miles (10.9 km)

Path width

250 yards (229 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Lawrence County

Touchdown point

38.674, -87.864

Lift-off point

38.696, -87.741

Record number

2405261927-02

34 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ILX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 104 mph.

• Approx 50 yards across pond
• 15x20ft building gone. Had electrical connected
• Portable building tipped over
• Laying towards the north. 8 in branch

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

Supercell thunderstorms developed along an outflow boundary from central Missouri into south-central Illinois along the I-70 corridor during the late afternoon and evening of May 26th. The storms eventually congealed into a line and swept eastward, causing significant wind damage across the southern portions of Clay, Richland, and Lawrence counties. Damage surveys revealed two tornadoes touched down...an EF-2 in Clay County northwest of Xenia and an EF-1 in Lawrence County south of Sumner.

A tornado touched down along East 250th Avenue just north of North 700th Street at 8:27 PM CDT. It damaged numerous trees as it tracked northeastward, then destroyed a small outbuilding and tore part of the roof off a house near the intersection of North 800th Street and East 450th Avenue. The tornado then caused minor damage to a home along North 850th Street before lifting just north of the intersection of North 850th Street and East 900th Avenue at 8:37 PM CDT.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 23:54 UTC and running to 02:10 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 00:57 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.

Mount Carmel (AJG), 11 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), 48 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:23 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

69 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 70 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.