Tornadoes Sweep Parts Of Midwest As Expected, Illinois Not As Hard Hit

Massive tornado yesterday in Jonesboro, Arkansas

As expected, tornadoes swept through parts of the Midwest Saturday, but luckily there have no reports of deaths so far, and only relatively minor injuries. There is a lot of damage, though.

Illinois had been expected to be the epicenter of the tornado outbreak and they did have tornadoes in that state.

But tornadoes were more heavily concentrated to the west in Iowa, and the most destructive of the tornadoes hit to the south, in Jonesboro, Arkansas and the neighboring town of Brookland.  

Dramatic videos of the tornado is at the bottom of this post.

In Jonesboro, a rapidly developing tornado quickly became strong and destroyed a shopping center and numerous homes, Local television station KAIT in Jonesboro reported only six injuries from the twister, which is amazing considering the destruction it caused.

The mayor of Jonesboro put everybody in town under curfew last night, ordering them to stay in their homes so that emergency workers could look for more people that needed help.  They also needed to clear streets of a huge amount of debris and fallen power lines.

Lots of people have seen this photo of a Jonesboro doctor behind
glass so he can protect his one year old from coronavirus. On
Saturday, the family's home was destroyed by a tornado.

Maybe the saddest result of the tornado involves a Dr. Jared Burks and his family. He's been on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak.

A photo taken by his wife Alyssa went viral recently. It showed the doctor watching, behind glass,  his one-year old son.  They must stay separate in case the doctor contracts the virus.  

The Jonesboro tornado destroyed the Burks family home Saturday while the doctor was in it. He wasn't hurt and his family was elsewhere, but the whole thing is just too cruel.  A GoFundMe page is set up for the Burks family. As of early this morning, people donated more than $25,000 to the family.

A total of at least 17 tornadoes have been so far confirmed across the Midwest Saturday.  Several homes and other buildings suffered extensive damage in Iowa and western Illinois.

Today, some severe thunderstorms are possible today in western New York and Pennsylvania, and in the Southeast Monday and Tuesday.

Up here in Vermont, we'll just get a couple rainy days today and Monday.  If any flooding occurs here, it will be very spotty and minor.

Some videos:

Videographer Mike Lane took this dramatic video of the tornado.

 

Zachary Hall too this video of the tornado destroying the Mall at Turtle Creek in Jonesboro:



Here's what scary live coverage of the tornado looked like on KAIT-TV in Jonesboro. The amount of debris in the air at 1:40 to 1:50 into the video is incredible:

 

Odd Midwest Tornado Outbreak Creates Havoc, Damage

Massive tornado approaching Taylerville, Illinois
Saturday evening. Photo by Robert Wolfe.

UPDATE: DECEMBER 4:

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.

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.

Flash Flooding, Other Storms Continue To Plague Nation

Good Samaritans rescue a 70 year old man from a flooded car in
Rockford, Illinois Monday.

Flash flooding is turning into a big problem in many different parts of the nation this week. Other storms have produced big hail and even a couple New Hampshire tornadoes.

I mentioned the Houghton, Michigan flood the other day. Other hard hit areas include Rockford, Illinois.

Many homes and businesses, including a hospital, were flooded there, and motorist were rescued from stranded cars. Three to five inches of rain fell in Rockford in just a few hours.

Parts of Texas, such as Port Arthur, hit so hard by Hurricane Harvey flooding last year, went under water again.

Snow plows clear heavy accumulations of hail from a highway
in Colorado this week. 

Today, the greatest risk of additional flooding includes coastal Texas and Louisiana, and an area around southeastern South Dakota and Iowa. (I hope the sump pumps are working great in my mother-in-law's house in Yankton, South Dakota!)

Meanwhile, the problem in Colorado was hail, especially in Greeley, Boulder and the Denver suburb of Aurora.

Some of the hailstones were the size of tennis balls, so you can imagine how many cars and roofs were damaged in these heavily populated areas.

Finally, we talked yesterday about those tornado warnings Monday in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.  

It turns out two tornadoes were confirmed in New Hampshire. A hiker in the White Mountains took a photo of a weak tornado skipping across the hills and forests around Lincoln, New Hampshire. Another tornado, and EFO with 75 mph winds, took a nine mile path near Bath, New Hampshire.

Here's some videos:

First,  a rescue from a flooded car in Rockford, Illinois:



Here water in Rockford gushes into a hospital:



Here's an intense hail storm in Greeley, Colorado:



In Greeley, hail washed into a low spot in one neighborhood and ended up being two to three feet deep, as this news clip shows:

Severe Weather Ongoing In Eastern Half Of The Nation

Large tornado near Washburn, Illinois Tuesday

Just a quick update to sum up the ongoing outbreak of severe weather in the eastern third of the nation today.

A very, very strong squall line has been going through the Ohio and Tennessee valleys this morning, with numerous reports of very damaging winds. 

There are a number of reports of roofs blown off homes in Kentucky and Tennesee.

They'll have to investigate whether any of these are tornadoes, but most of damage reports look like they come from straight line winds from very intense thunderstorms.

Winds reportedly gusted to 79 mph in Carrollton, Kentucky and 76 mph in Paducah, Kentucky this morning.

Super strong thunderstorms can be as dangerous as tornadoes, so Kentucky and Tennesee this morning prove the point.

Today's bad storms come after an even worse day Tuesday.

Several tornadoes touched down, mostly in Illinois,  At least three people have died in Tuesday's tornadoes, the Weather Channel reported.  There were nearly two dozen reports of tornadoes Tuesday.

In what must have been a terrifying case, a very strong tornado crossed Interstate 55 near Perryville, Missouri after dark, hurling cars quite a distance and mangling them. Police there reported one dead and 10 injured.

Tornadoes, even big ones, are usually very hard to see at night. During the day, if you're traveling down a highway, you can often see a tornado getting ready to cross the road ahead of you.

Tornado damage inside an Illinois nursing
home on Tuesday

So you stop and let it by, or turn around and go the other way if necessary.

At night, motorists blindly drive right into the tornadoes. It had to be so terrifying to suddenly be in the midst of such a strong tornado.

To make matters worse, the tornado also blew tons of debris from a nearby salvage yard onto Interstate 55 as the trapped motorists got caught up in the twister, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Another large tornado in Ottawa, Illinois smacked into a nursing home. Some residents were injured, but none severely.

For the remainder of today, the threat of severe thunderstorms and possibly a few more tornadoes continues from northern Alabama to around the New York City area. The greatest threat for the most intense storms and tornadoes runs from the Gulf Coast states to southern Pennsylvania. 

Probably the greatest threat of tornadoes today will be over northern Alabama and Mississippi.

All the severe storms will have swept off the coast tonight, and forecasters don't anticipate more severe weather for the next few days after today.

The parent storm's strong cold front will cross the eastern seaboard tonight, ending another spate of record warmth.

In New England, it will actually turn briefly bitterly cold Friday and Saturday.

I'll have a review of Vermont and New England's extreme winter weather in a post later today.

Big Dramatic Tornado In Illinois Yesterday

Big tornado in Illinois yesterday.  

A large scary looking tornado swept through an area of Illinois yesterday, about 200 miles southwest of Chicago.

I was surprised to see such a monster, but there was no good scientific reason why I was surprised

Large tornadoes are most common in the spring and early summer, and less common once you get into July. But you can still get biggies anytime of year, so this isn't so shocking.

There was a severe thunderstorm watch, but not a tornado watch in effect before the tornado formed. Just proves that severe thunderstorms can spin off tornadoes, even when forecasters think the risk of twisters is relatively low

Of course, once meteorologists detected rotation on radar, they issued a tornado warning for the area. Sometimes tornado warnings turn out to be false alarms. Not this time. So take heed whenever your area goes under a tornado warning.

The Chicago Tribune is reporting damage around the town of Cameron, Illinois, but early reports are there are no major injuries.

The tornado, as you'll see in the video below, was multi-vortex. That means there were small but intense tornadoes spinning inside the larger one.

Frequently in this video, you'll see the funnel cloud not actually touching the ground. But the tornado is there, believe me.

And while the main funnel doesn't always touch the ground, you'll see the suction vortices spinning around. (Suction vortices are the official name of those smaller tornadoes within the main one.)

Here's the video from storm chaser Kholby Martin.

More Video On That Big Illinois Tornado

A destroyed house in Rochelle, Illinois after Thursday's
large tornado. Photo from Getty Images.  

As always in these situations, we've got interesting perspectives on that giant tornado that ripped across northern Illinois on Thursday, killing two people, injuring 22 others and destroying a pretty sizeable number of homes and businesses.  

The National Weather Service gave the tornado a preliminary rating of EF4 on a scale of zero to 5, five being the strongest.

The Illinois tornado traveled for nearly 20 miles across northern Illinois, sometimes reaching up to a half mile wide. It had peak winds of between 180 and 200 mph.

Below, you'll see a video shot from a plane Friday, retracing the tornado's path. You can see how it widened and strengthened as it plowed across open fields, hitting some farm complexes, and narrowly missing others.

You can see the randomness of the damage. One farm trashed, the other literally steps away seeming unscathed. You can see how it tore through the village of Fairdale, turning one side of the tiny village to mincemeat, and pretty much leaving the other side alone.

Near the end of the tornado's path, you can see it narrowing. It sliced a skinny line of damage through an industrial complex, causing a narrow area of roof damage on one huge building.

Then, the tornado damaged one more farm, then, apparently, lifted. Watch:



Here's another video, this one from Severe Studios, a time lapse as tornado chasers followed the tornado, with part at the end a fairly close of view of the twister: