Unrated tornado, Effingham to Green Creek, Illinois, April 30, 2025

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 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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

April 30, 2025

Touchdown

8:14 PM CDT (01:14 UTC)

Lifted

8:16 PM CDT (01:16 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.7 miles (2.8 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Effingham County

Touchdown point

39.156, -88.532

Lift-off point

39.166, -88.503

Record number

2504301914-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ILX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EFU.

• Video evidence of the tornado touching down south of E 1680th Ave and west of Hwy 45. No damage found.

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

A warm front lifting northward into south-central Illinois triggered scattered supercell thunderstorms along and south of the I-72 corridor during the evening of April 30th. Two brief EF-U tornadoes touched down...one in Effingham County and the other in Coles County. Other cells dropped hail as large as ping-pong balls (1.5 in diameter) in Owaneco in Christian County.

Video evidence showed a tornado touched down in an open field just west of Highway 45 and south of County Road 1680 North at 8:14 PM CDT. The tornado tracked northeastward, crossing Highway 45 and I-57 before dissipating just east of I-57 and south of East 1800th Avenue at 8:16 PM CDT. No damage was observed.

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

32 minutes of warning. NWS ILX issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:42 UTC, 32 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 21:41 UTC and running to 02:54 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 00:58 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.

The Evansville,IN radar (KVWX), 122 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:15 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 2025 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are

10 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.