EF0 tornado, Perdueville to Paxton Airport, Illinois, May 18, 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

May 18, 2026

Touchdown

10:25 AM CDT (15:25 UTC)

Lifted

10:26 AM CDT (15:26 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

1.0 miles (1.7 km)

Path width

80 yards (73 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Ford County

Touchdown point

40.415, -88.191

Lift-off point

40.421, -88.173

Highest wind the damage implies

85 mph

Surveyed by

NWS LOT

The office's name for it

Paxton

Survey last edited

June 19, 2026

Record number

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

A short-lived EF-0 tornado caused damage to a farmstead and power poles along N 1500E Road just north of E 100N Road near Paxton.

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

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LOT, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 85 mph.

• Outbuilding lifted off a cinderblock foundation and dropped several feet away where it was destroyed and thrown at a nearby home. Outbuilding had no poles and appeared to be held in place by bolts to a cinderblock foundation.
• Top of an evergreen tree had some missing branches.
• Broken windows on home. Unclear if the windows were broke from debris from the outbuilding, so went with a lower bound wind.

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

A line of strong to severe thunderstorms moved across northern Illinois during the late morning of May 18th producing severe wind gusts, wind damage and one brief tornado.

A brief tornado with estimated peak winds of 85 mph touched down northeast of the intersection of County Road E 100N and County Road N 1400E. The tornado moved across fields and then just west of County Road 1500 E, the tornado lifted an outbuilding off a cinderblock foundation and dropped it several feet away where it was destroyed. Windows on a nearby home were broken, possibly by debris from the outbuilding. The top of an evergreen tree had some missing tree limbs. Several utility poles were broken along County Road 1500 E and then tornado lifted in a field.

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.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 15:05 UTC and running to 16:37 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 12:44 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.

Rantoul (TIP), 14 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Lincoln radar (KILX), 102 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 15:26 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

19 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.