EF1 tornado, Chautauqua Park to Manito, 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 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

March 10, 2026

Touchdown

11:52 PM CDT (04:52 UTC)

Lifted

11:58 PM CDT (04:58 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

5.6 miles (9.0 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Mason County

Touchdown point

40.297, -90.029

Lift-off point

40.337, -89.937

Highest wind the damage implies

100 mph

Surveyed by

NWS ILX

The office's name for it

Havana-Topeka Tornado

Survey last edited

March 12, 2026

Record number

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

The tornado touched down on the far east edge of Havana near Laurel Hill Cemetery, and moved northeast to near Topeka. A number of tree trunks were snapped along the path, and several power poles were snapped along county road 2130. The worst damage was about a mile west-northwest of Topeka, where a horse barn was partially destroyed, killing one horse.

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

51 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 100 mph.

• Carport was thrown about 100 yds
• Lots of trees leanimg over
• Horse barn one horse killed
• Overturned irrigation system

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.

A tornado touched down on the far east side of Havana near the Laurel Hill Cemetery at 11:52 PM CDT. The tornado tracked northeastward, snapping trees and downing numerous power poles along County Road 2130. A horse barn was partially destroyed and a horse was killed near the intersection of County Road 2200 and County Road 1900 about 1 mile west-northwest of Topeka before the tornado dissipated at 11:58 PM CDT.

A tornado touched down northeast of the intersection of County Road 2800 East and County Road 2000 North about 1 mile south-southeast of Forest City at 12:06 AM CDT March 11th. The tornado tracked northeastward, overturning several irrigation pivots and snapping trees along its path before crossing into southwestern Tazewell County south of the intersection of Jacobs Road and Nichols Road at 12:11 AM CDT.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:57 UTC and running to 06:46 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 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.

Peoria (PIA), 46 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Lincoln radar (KILX), 58 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:52 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.