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EF2 tornado in Christian County, Illinois

Tornado December 28, 2025 · Christian County, Illinois

EF2
Rating
23.4 mi
Whole path
250 yd
Path width

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

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 250 yards (0.14 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

A storm spotter captured video of a tornado touching down in a field in far northeastern Christian County about 1 mile west-northwest of Blue Mound at 2:59 PM CST. The tornado quickly crossed into western Macon County at 3:00 PM CST with minimal damage noted in Christian County.

The wider storm

The airmass continued to destabilize across central Illinois during the afternoon of December 28th as high temperatures reached record values in the upper 60s to around 70 degrees and dewpoints hovered in the lower to middle 60s. Thanks to the high degree of instability and shear, a line of thunderstorms rapidly formed along an advancing cold front near the I-55 corridor by early afternoon. The storms then pushed eastward, producing 3 tornadoes and scattered damaging winds eastward to the Indiana border. The most significant tornado was rated EF-2 and caused considerable property damage just south of Decatur in Macon County.

Began near Osbernville (39.7144, -89.1421).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1305605. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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