EF1 tornado, Saybrook, Illinois, December 28, 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 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

December 28, 2025

Touchdown

3:24 PM CST (21:24 UTC)

Lifted

3:25 PM CST (21:25 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.9 miles (1.4 km)

Path width

30 yards (27 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

McLean County

Touchdown point

40.417, -88.478

Lift-off point

40.421, -88.462

Record number

2512281524-01

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

• West-facing portion of metal roof peeled eastward.
• Outbuilding was destroyed and tossed toward the northeast. Images from WCIA TV media.

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

The airmass continued to destabilize across central Illinois during the afternoon of December 28th as high temperatures reached record values in the upper 60s to around 70 degrees and dewpoints hovered in the lower to middle 60s. Thanks to the high degree of instability and shear, a line of thunderstorms rapidly formed along an advancing cold front near the I-55 corridor by early afternoon. The storms then pushed eastward, producing 3 tornadoes and scattered damaging winds eastward to the Indiana border. The most significant tornado was rated EF-2 and caused considerable property damage just south of Decatur in Macon County.

A tornado touched down about 3 miles east-southeast of Saybrook at 3:24 PM CST. The tornado destroyed a large outbuilding, throwing the debris to the east-northeast. It then quickly dissipated before reaching the Ford County line at 3:25 PM CST.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:48 UTC and running to 21:37 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 19:46 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.

Rantoul (TIP), 31 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Lincoln radar (KILX), 79 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:24 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

12 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.