EF1 tornado, Tallula to Athens, Illinois, June 10, 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 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, as surveyed

EF1, preliminary

Date

June 10, 2026

Touchdown

10:59 PM CDT (03:59 UTC)

Lifted

11:03 PM CDT (04:03 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

2.5 miles (4.0 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Menard County

Touchdown point

39.965, -89.761

Lift-off point

39.951, -89.718

Highest wind the damage implies

105 mph

Surveyed by

NWS ILX

The office's name for it

Athens Tornado

Survey last edited

June 13, 2026

Record number

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

This tornado touched down along Kent St. west of Athens, and tracked southeast to Fitschen Rd. on the south edge of Athens. A number of trees were snapped along the path.

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

70 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 110 mph.

• Uplift of roof with damaged scattered in a nearby field. Wall partially collapsed on east side of the building.
• Airport hangers destroyed and blown through the airport property
• South side of roof completely removed on metal building
• Trunk snapped at the top of the tree

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

A line of thunderstorms developed ahead of an approaching cold front during the evening of June 10th. Scattered wind damage was observed along and north of the I-72 corridor, with the most concentrated damage focusing across portions of Menard, Logan, Sangamon, and Macon counties where the cells interacted with an existing outflow boundary from earlier storms. Six tornadoes touched down within this corridor, including an EF-1 tornado that tracked across Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport and the north side of Springfield.

A tornado touched down along Reimer Avenue about 3 miles northeast of Tallula at 10:49pm CDT. It damaged a grain bin and several trees at a farmstead on Reimer Avenue, then continued east-northeastward damaging numerous trees in Lincoln's New Salem State Park and removing shingles from a home on State Park Road. The tornado crossed IL-97 and damaged additional trees in a neighborhood just south of Athens Blacktop Road before lifting 1 mile southwest of Tice at 10:55pm CDT.

A tornado touched down near the intersection of Clemens Road and A Kent Street west of Athens at 10:59pm CDT. It tracked southwestward damaging numerous trees as it passed just southwest of Athens and quickly dissipated as it reached Fitschen Road on the south edge of Athens at 11:03pm CDT.

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

1 minute of warning. NWS ILX issued a tornado warning for this county at 03:58 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 04:19 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 00:06 UTC and running to 04:00 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, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 01:19 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.

Springfield (SPI), 13 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Lincoln radar (KILX), 40 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:02 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

23 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.