EF2 Tornado — Macon, Illinois

2025-12-28 · near Blue Mound, Macon, Illinois

Event narrative

This tornado crossed into far western Macon County from Christian County about 1 mile west-northwest of Blue Mound at 3:00 PM CST. It tracked east-northeastward and remained weak until it crossed US Highway 54 and reached Elwin. Between Elwin and Turpin, several homes sustained roof damage and numerous large trees were snapped. The most significant tornado damage occurred along East Skyline Drive as the roofs of 8 homes were stripped off, a garage was completely destroyed and tossed to the next block, and very large trees were knocked down. As the tornado continued east-northeastward, it caused more roof and tree damage between South Baltimore Avenue and South Mount Zion Road. The tornado then weakened, but continued to snap tree branches and cause shingle damage to a few homes as it passed through the Long Creek area eastward to the Macon/Piatt County line. It then tracked into western Piatt County just north of the intersection of Ocean Trail and NE County Line Road at 3:30 PM CST.

Wider weather episode

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.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (39.7152, -89.1403)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1305606. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.