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EF2 tornado in Wabash County, Illinois

Tornado May 19, 2022 · Wabash County, Illinois

EF2

Rating

26.9 mi

Whole path

300 yd

Path width

$705K

Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Wabash County → Gibson County, Indiana → Knox County, Indiana; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 300 yards (0.17 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF2 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF2 is considerable damage: roofs torn off well-built houses, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, consistent with estimated gusts of 111–135 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

The tornado touched down near Keensburg and moved northeast, passing across the southeast portion of Mount Carmel and across the Wabash River into Indiana. A few homes lost large portions of roofing, mainly shingles. Outbuildings and small sheds were destroyed. Numerous power lines were down. Many trees were snapped or uprooted. Many trees landed on homes and structures, causing some structural damage. Dozens of power poles were snapped off. A large machine shed lost small sections of metal roof and wall panels. Several pivot irrigation systems were flipped. Peak winds were estimated near 115 mph in Wabash County. The tornado crossed the Wabash River into Gibson County, Indiana.

The wider storm

An organized complex of thunderstorms accompanied a pronounced mesoscale convective vortex (MCV) as it tracked across Missouri and Illinois. A corridor of moderate to strong instability formed ahead of the MCV from southern Missouri into southern Illinois and Indiana. The storms moved northeast from southeast Missouri across southwest Illinois in the form of a squall line early in the evening, with locally damaging winds. After weakening for a couple hours, the storms then redeveloped over the Wabash Valley region into an organized cluster with an embedded supercell. The supercell produced a tornado that tracked into southwest Indiana.

Began near Keensburg (38.3439, -87.8778).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1018159. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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