EF1 Tornado — Effingham, Illinois

2025-04-02 · near Evers, Effingham, Illinois

Event narrative

A tornado touched down just south of the intersection of North 2000th Street and East 1300th Avenue at 6:23 PM CDT. The tornado damaged the roof and siding of a home upon its initial touchdown, then tracked northeastward and reached its peak intensity near the intersection of North 2300th Street and East 1500th Avenue where it bent 5 power poles. It then crossed into Jasper County north of the intersection of North 2400th Street and East 1600th Avenue where it threw grain bins across the road at 6:27 PM CDT.

Wider weather episode

An area of low pressure tracked from southeastern Nebraska during the morning of April 2nd to western Wisconsin by evening, triggering two rounds of convection across central Illinois.

Round 1 occurred during the morning when a line of thunderstorms along the trailing cold front pushed into the Illinois River Valley. These storms were generally sub-severe, but one cell produced a downburst with estimated winds in excess of 70 mph across parts of Logan County, downing a few trees, tearing the roof off a business, and flipping 3 semis in and near Lincoln.

Round 2 materialized by early afternoon as storms re-developed along an outflow boundary from the morning convection along the I-55 corridor. These storms tapped into a moderately unstable and highly sheared environment and quickly became severe. Six tornadoes touched down...including a long-track EF-2 tornado that remained on the ground for nearly 45 miles and impacted parts of Cumberland, Clark, and Edgar counties before crossing into Vigo County, Indiana. Numerous reports of wind damage and large hail were received as the storms congealed into a line and pushed eastward across I-57 by early evening. The largest reported hail stones were the size of eggs (2 in diameter) in Springfield in Sangamon County and just northwest of Latham in southern Logan County.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (39.1033, -88.4356)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1248977. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.