Unrated tornado, Mason, Illinois, February 19, 2026

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, as surveyed

Unrated, preliminary

Date

February 19, 2026

Touchdown

3:16 PM CST (21:16 UTC)

Path length

0.2 miles (0.3 km)

Path width

20 yards (18 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Effingham County

Touchdown point

38.943, -88.581

Lift-off point

38.945, -88.578

Surveyed by

NWS ILX

The office's name for it

Mason Tornado

Survey last edited

March 10, 2026

Record number

None yet. SPC numbers 2026 in the spring of 2027.

Brief tornado touch down confirmed from chaser video.

Written by NWS ILX in the NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit. A survey is revised as better evidence arrives.

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 from chasers of brief touch down in a field.

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

A surface low lifted northeastward across Missouri towards the Illinois-Iowa border during the afternoon and evening of February 19th. A warm front extended east from the low into southeast Illinois. In response to this system, scattered supercell thunderstorms developed across central and southeast Illinois, with the greatest coverage being in the general vicinity of the I-70 corridor. Environmental conditions supported all severe hazards, including large hail up to 2.5 inches in diameter, damaging winds, and tornadoes, with a total of eight tornadoes occurring in the NWS Lincoln coverage area. Most of these tornadoes were brief, and none were stronger than EF-1, but one serious injury occurred in Crawford County as a result of a tornado. Another indirect injury occurred on I-57 in Effingham County when thunderstorm winds contributed to a multi-vehicle accident.

A brief tornado was confirmed via storm chaser video. No damage occurred, so an intensity rating could not be assigned.

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

10 minutes of warning. NWS ILX issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:06 UTC, 10 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 21:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 18:20 UTC and running to 01:23 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 19:59 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), 106 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:14 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 2026 tornado in IllinoisEvery tornado in Illinois since 1950Warnings in force in Illinois nowThe forecast where you are

10 more have been surveyed in the United States that day, so far.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. A survey can be revised, so the rating, the path and the casualties can all still change.

NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit, the record the survey teams file from the damage, and NOAA Storm Prediction Center storm reports. Neither is the official database for 2026, which SPC publishes in the spring of 2027.