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EF1 tornado in Christian County, Illinois

Tornado June 29, 2023 · Christian County, Illinois

EF1
Rating
1.0 mi
Path length
150 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 150 yards (0.09 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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

Sentinel-2 satellite analysis showed a tornado touched down in a farm field 1.2 miles south-southwest of Mount Auburn just northeast of the intersection of North 1400 East Road and East 2700 North Road at 12:33 PM CDT. The tornado tracked southeastward, damaging numerous trees along North 1500 East Road just north of its intersection with East 2700 North Road. A car door was impaled by a piece of wooden debris as well. The tornado dissipated about 1 mile south-southeast of Mount Auburn at 12:34 PM CDT.

The wider storm

A cluster of thunderstorms that initiated during the night of June 28th across the Central Plains entered west-central Illinois by the late morning of June 29th. Aided by an increasingly unstable airmass characterized by CAPE values of 3000-4000J/kg and a 30-40kt mid-level jet streak, the storms became linear in nature and began racing east-southeastward across central Illinois. Widespread wind gusts of 60-80mph were observed along the line, with localized corridors of even higher gusts. The highest measured gust of 101 mph came from a personal weather station near Taylorville that took a direct hit from a tornado. A total of seven tornadoes were embedded within the line of storms, including an EF-2 tornado near Curran in Sangamon County. The high winds caused extensive tree and power line damage, leading to power loss for over 200,000 customers. Some people in the Springfield area were without power for nearly a week before all lines were restored. The winds impacted all of central and southeast Illinois, but were most concentrated between the I-74 and I-70 corridors. Once the line of storms dropped into the Ohio River Valley, additional severe cells fired along the trailing outflow boundary south of I-70 during the late afternoon. These storms produced hail as large as 2 inches in diameter across parts of Clay, Richland, and Lawrence counties.

Began near Mt Auburn (39.7486, -89.2669).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

6 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1104168. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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