EF0 tornado, Sparland to Varna, Illinois, March 10, 2026

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

   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. 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

EF0, preliminary

Date

March 10, 2026

Touchdown

8:01 PM CDT (01:01 UTC)

Lifted

8:18 PM CDT (01:18 UTC)

On the ground

17 minutes

Path length

12.6 miles (20.3 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Marshall County

Touchdown point

41.074, -89.428

Lift-off point

41.085, -89.187

Highest wind the damage implies

80 mph

Surveyed by

NWS ILX

The office's name for it

Lacon-Varna Tornado

Survey last edited

March 12, 2026

Record number

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

Video evidence from an Illinois River barge operator confirmed the starting point of a tornado 3.5 miles NW of Lacon. The tornado crossed the IL river and continued eastward where it damaged numerous trees north of Lake Wildwood. Photo evidence from a spotter showed the tornado still occurring 2 miles south of Magnolia before it dissipated just east of Highway 89.

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

4 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ILX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 80 mph.

• Many trees damaged internal to the woods. Snapped trunks and branches.
• Video evidence from a river barge operator showed the start of a tornado northwest of Lacon on the west side of the Illinois River.

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

A warm front lifted northward through central Illinois on March 10th, allowing temperatures to soar into the upper 70s and lower 80s. Record highs were established at Springfield (84 degrees), Peoria (83 degrees), and Lincoln (82 degrees)...all topping their previous highs set back in 1955. As an upper-level disturbance tracked eastward out of the Plains and interacted with the departing front, scattered supercell thunderstorms developed along and north of a Macomb to Pontiac line during the late afternoon. Some of these cells dropped giant hail (over 4 inches in diameter) across the southern part of the NWS Chicago County Warning Area (CWA). Further south in the NWS Lincoln coverage zone, the storms spawned 3 tornadoes across parts of Knox, Stark, and Marshall counties. After these initial cells tracked further northeast out of the area, a line of thunderstorms formed along an advancing cold front across the Illinois River Valley by late evening...with the storms eventually dropping south of the I-70 corridor toward daybreak on March 11th. The line initially produced a downburst with 80-90mph winds in Havana in Mason County, as well as 2 tornadoes further east in rural Mason County. Closer to sunrise, an additional tornado touched down near Yale in Jasper County before the storms exited into Indiana.

Video evidence from an Illinois River barge operator showed a tornado touched down west of the Illinois River about 3 miles north of Sparland at 8:01 PM CDT. The tornado crossed the Illinois River and tracked eastward, damaging numerous trees north of Lake Wildwood before dissipating just east of IL-89 and south of Sandy Creek at 8:18 PM CDT.

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

9 minutes of warning. NWS ILX issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:52 UTC, 9 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:57 UTC and running to 06:00 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 00:34 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.

Lacon (C75), 9 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Lincoln radar (KILX), 103 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:02 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

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.