Unrated tornado, Kankakee Airport to Ahern, Illinois, March 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 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

March 10, 2026

Touchdown

6:36 PM CDT (23:36 UTC)

Lifted

6:37 PM CDT (23:37 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.1 km)

Path width

20 yards (18 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Kankakee County

Touchdown point

41.111, -87.731

Lift-off point

41.112, -87.730

Surveyed by

NWS LOT

The office's name for it

Sun River Terrace 2

Survey last edited

March 24, 2026

Record number

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

Video shared on social media taken on S 8250E Road approximately three quarters of a mile south of IL-17 showed a ground circulation occurring in a field to the west, coincident with a brief circulation noted in radar imagery. Swirl patterns were also identified in Gray Sky satellite imagery where the tornado was observed. There is no known damage that was caused by the tornado.

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

600 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LOT, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EFU. The highest wind the damage implies is 160 mph.

• Small section of roof on west end of motel building damaged. Multiple sections of shingles removed. Some debris blown at least 300 yards to the northeast. From Kankakee County drone imagery.
• Shipping containers blown into retention pond.
• West facing section of metal wall blown in.
• Also leaning/snapped power poles

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

Scattered severe thunderstorms produced numerous tornadoes and large to giant hail as they moved across northern Illinois during the late afternoon and evening of March 10th. Included in the 9 total tornadoes in northeast Illinois that day is an EF-3 which tracked from the south side of Kankakee into Newton and Jasper counties in Indiana and devastated a portion of Aroma Park. There were two primary corridors of large hail; one extending from northern Will County into the city of Chicago, which produced hail upwards of 4.8 inches in diameter, and another from central Livingston County extending east across Kankakee County. Nearly a dozen individual reports of hail greater than 4 inches came out of this southernmost corridor, and a 6.6 inch hailstone found in Kankakee is pending as the new Illinois state record.

Two separate storm chaser videos showed a brief EF-U tornado occurring in a field near Kensington Avenue and S 1000W Road in Kankakee Township. Swirl patterns identified in a field from Gray Sky satellite imagery were used to approximate the start and end locations of the tornado. There is no known damage that was caused by the tornado.

Three separate storm chaser videos showed a brief EF-U tornado occurring in a field north of W 3500S Road and east of Illinois State Route 115. Swirl patterns noted in a field from Gray Sky satellite imagery were used to identify the start and end locations of the tornado. There is no known damage that was caused by the tornado.

A destructive EF-3 tornado with peak winds of 160 mph impacted portions of central and eastern Kankakee County before moving into northwest Indiana. The most notable damage caused by this tornado in Kankakee County occurred in the Aroma Park area. This tornado began just north of W 3000S Road southwest of Kankakee, IL, about one mile east of State Route 115. The tornado intensified while traveling east-northeastward into the far southern section of the city of Kankakee in the vicinity of Route 45, where concentrated higher end EF-1 tree damage and structural damage was observed. The tornado intensified further while moving across E 2500S Road, destroying a two-story home and several metal farm buildings, consistent with EF-3 caliber wind speeds. Concentrated extreme tree damage was noted, with numerous large hardwood trees snapped, stubbed, or uprooted despite lacking leaves, likely due to extensive debris lofting in the area.|After crossing I-57 and the Kankakee River, the tornado rapidly increased in size, producing a swath of significant damage in and near northern portions of Aroma Park. In this area, multiple homes were heavily damaged to an estimated EF-2 intensity. The tornado's peak width occurred here and was estimated to be approximately 1550 yards. Ground survey and aerial imagery suggests that the tornado further intensified as it tracked east-southeast before crossing the Kankakee River again. Within a narrow 150-200 yard wide section along S. Sandbar Road to the northeast of Aroma Park, three homes were completely destroyed, consistent with EF-3 caliber winds, and multiple others were heavily damaged and rendered uninhabitable. A heavy pickup truck parked in front of the garage of one of the destroyed homes was moved over 100 feet into a ditch next to the driveway, possibly being spun around the remnants of a small tree before reaching the ditch. In addition, on the other side of Sandbar Road, a crossover type SUV appeared to have been rolled onto the adjacent property and deposited onto a pile of debris just north of a heavily damaged residence. Along the swath of the most intense structural damage, concentrated extreme tree damage was noted, with numerous large hardwood trees snapped, stubbed, or uprooted despite lacking leaves, likely owing to extensive flying debris. Along Sandbar Road and through the Kankakee Elks Golf Course, the tornado's width was estimated at near 1500 yards. The tornado then continued generally east to east-northeast towards the Indiana state line, downing numerous additional trees, causing occasional structural damage, and flipping irrigation pivots as it moved just north of the communities of Wichert and Hopkins Park. The tornado continued on its destructive path into Newton County, Indiana where it caused additional EF-3 damage before eventually lifting west of De Motte in Jasper County. It was on the ground for over 35 miles and, at its peak, spanned a half mile in diameter. The storm destroyed numerous homes and resulted in around a dozen injuries and three fatalities: one in Aroma Park and the other two in Newton County, Indiana.

An EF-1 tornado that was a satellite to the impactful Aroma Park area EF-3 tornado formed northeast of Aroma Park. High-resolution satellite imagery, storm chaser video, and radar data all depicted a generally southward-moving satellite tornado. Storm chaser video looking southeast from IL-17 captured the development of the tornado, which initially moved southwestward for about 30 seconds before becoming obscured by rain. Clear swirl marks (including several loops) were evident in a field north of S. Sandbar Road in Gray Sky satellite imagery near the start of the tornado. As the tornado continued southward, it uprooted a grove of trees in the vicinity of S. Sandbar Road, consistent with wind speeds near 90 mph. Sporadic tree damage was noted in high-resolution satellite imagery south of the Kankakee River, just to the east of a subdivision on Bittersweet Drive, before the tornado dissipated.

Video shared on social media taken on S 8250E Road approximately three quarters of a mile south of IL-17 showed a ground circulation occurring in a field to the west, coincident with a brief circulation noted in radar imagery. Swirl patterns were also identified in Gray Sky satellite imagery where the tornado was observed. There is no known damage that was caused by the tornado.

Video taken from S 13000E Road south of E 1000S Road looking west showed a brief anticyclonic tornado occurring in a field. Video time stamp and location matches an area of anticyclonic rotation seen on radar imagery. There is no known damage that was caused by the tornado.

An anticyclonic satellite tornado occurred north of Hopkins Park. High-resolution satellite imagery depicted swirl marks across multiple fields in the general vicinity of Baseline, S 13000E, and N 13500E Roads in a counter-clockwise looping path. Based on radar imagery and swirl patterns, the tornado appeared to be a anticyclonic tornado that initially moved north, stalled, and then turned southward before ending just north of a residence on S 13000 E Road, less than 300 yards southwest of the start location. There is no known damage that was caused by the tornado.

The deaths

1 direct deaths are recorded for this tornado, each with what Storm Data knows of it.

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

20 minutes of warning. NWS LOT issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:16 UTC, 20 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:57 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:50 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.

Kankakee (IKK), 11 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Chicago radar (KLOT), 62 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:37 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

20 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.