EF1 tornado in Marshall County, Illinois

Tornado February 8, 2024 · Marshall County, Illinois

EF1

Rating

10.0 mi

Whole path

100 yd

Path width

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Marshall County → Putnam County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

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The path drawn at its surveyed width of 100 yards (0.06 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

A tornado touched down in a field about 3 miles south of Henry at 4:40 PM CST. The tornado tracked northeastward through rural northern Marshall County, damaging numerous trees and a few farm outbuildings before crossing into southern Putnam County between County Road 1220 North and Illinois Highway 18 at 4:44 PM CST.

The wider storm

As a deep area of low pressure tracked slowly northeastward across the Upper Midwest, a warm front surged northward through central Illinois on February 8th. Thanks to strong southerly flow in the wake of the front, near record high temperatures in the lower to middle 60s were observed. With modest instability in place and increasing deep-layer wind shear ahead of an approaching upper wave, scattered supercell thunderstorms developed across the Illinois River Valley during the late afternoon and evening. One of the cells produced an EF-1 tornado in northern Marshall County near Henry that tracked northeastward into Putnam County. Other storms dropped hail as large as quarters.

Began near Henry (41.0700, -89.3600).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1151606. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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