Flash Flood — Champaign, Illinois

2025-07-26 · near Champaign, Champaign, Illinois

Event narrative

Cars were driving through bumper-deep water flowing across the road on the north side of Champaign.

Wider weather episode

An outflow boundary interacting with a warm and very humid environment triggered clusters of slow-moving thunderstorms across east-central Illinois during the evening of July 26th. Thanks to precipitable water values around 2.25 as per the 00z KILX upper air sounding, hourly rainfall rates of 2-3 inches occurred with the stronger storms. The hardest hit location was across portions of Champaign County from just southeast of Mahomet east-northeastward to Rantoul. An observer 1 mile southeast of Mahomet measured 6.75 rainfall in just a couple of hours. The heavy rainfall led to scattered flash flooding...especially on the north-northeast side of Champaign.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (40.1324, -88.2517)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1277340. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.