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| Massive tornado approaching Taylerville, Illinois Saturday evening. Photo by Robert Wolfe. |
This proved to be the largest December Illinois on record. So far, they've counted 26 tornadoes in Illinois on December 1, beating the previous December record of 21 set in 1957. Shout out to Mike Bettes at the Weather Channel for pointing this out.
The National Weather Service in Springfield, Illinois said Saturday's outbreak was the third largest tornado outbreak for any month of the year.
Tornadoes in Illinois are much more of a springtime type of event. The largest Illinois tornado outbreak had 39 of them on April 16, 1996. There were 32 twisters in Illinois on April 2, 2006.
The worst tornado, the one I describe in my pre-updated post, below, was an EF3 with winds of up to 155 mph. It was up to a half mile wide and stay on the ground for nearly 13 miles.
It thankfully killed nobody, but left 22 injured, destroyed 34 homes, left 66 homes too damaged to inhabit, and left another 406 homes damaged but inhabitable. says the Springfield NWS.
On Sunday, the severe weather continued, this time in the Southeast. One twister tore through King's Bay Naval Base in Georgia, causing relatively minor injuries to five people and leaving a trail of damage.
It surprisingly hasn't been a particularly busy end of year tornado period. There were 42 tornado reports in November in the United States, which isn't far from average. We're up to about 30 so far in this young December month. If we don't get many more twisters before the end of the year, December, too, will come out pretty close to normal in the tornado department.
PREVIOUS DISCUSSION
Over the past two days, a rather out of season tornado outbreak has been causing big trouble from Oklahoma to Illinois to Georgia.
A strong, sprawling storm in the middle of the country is to blame.
Friday, the first day of the tornadoes wasn't much of a surprise. Forecasters had alerted people days in advance that eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas and southern Missouri were under the gun. And these regions indeed got hit Friday.
One person died Friday night in a Missouri tornado, and another twister that might have tracked for as long as 60 miles through eastern Oklahoma caused a lot of damage, especially around Lake Tenkiller.
Saturday was more of a surprise. We knew there was the risk of severe storms and possible tornadoes in Illinois on Saturday. but things got out of control beyond what most people imagined.
So far there have been 22 reports of tornadoes in Illinois. Most of those tornadoes came from three or four supercell thunderstorms that kept dropping twister.
An especially strong one smashed the Illinois town of Taylorville, population approximately 11,000. Meteorologists watched in horror as radar indicated a strong tornado heading toward that town for as much as an hour before hitting. Everyone hoped it would weaken, but it didn't.
At least Taylorville residents got plenty of warning. The National Weather Service in Lincoln, Illinois issued a tornado warning for the Taylorville area 42 minutes before the twister struck.
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| Another tornado spinning in Illinois yesterday. |
Despite extensive damage to more than 100 homes, there were no deaths reported. About thirty people were injured.
Not necessarily fun fact: The high school sports teams in this town are the Taylorville Tornadoes.
The supercell responsible for this tornado lasted a long time, starting east of St. Louis and ending east of Bloomington, Illinois, a distance of 140 miles. As noted, this storm kept spitting out tornadoes along its path.
This morning, tornado warnings went up in parts of southern Georgia.
Tornado outbreaks do happen from time to time this time of year, if there's a strong enough parent storm system, as there was over the past couple of days. It's a pretty odd to have such powerful tornadoes go as far north as central Illinois in early December, but it's not completely unprecedented.
Tornadoes have touched down as far north as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in past Decembers. However most twisters in the final month of the year are confined to near the Gulf Coast and lower Mississippi Valley.
One ingredient for tornadoes is warm, humid air, which is something of a rarity during the first month of winter.
Tornadoes are especially dangerous this time of year because people tend not to expect them. Plus, they're more likely to happen in darkness, since days are so short. People might not be aware of a twister approaching under cover of darkness.
After today, tornadoes seem unlikely in the United States until at least next Saturday, when a new storm along the Gulf Coast might create some Deep South severe weather.
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