EF1 tornado in Kankakee County, Illinois

An EF-1 tornado that was a satellite to the impactful Aroma Park area EF-3 tornado formed northeast of Aroma Park. High-resolution satellite imagery, storm chaser video, and radar data all depicted a generally southward-moving satellite tornado. Storm chaser video looking southeast from IL-17 captured the development of the tornado, which initially moved southwestward for about 30 seconds before becoming obscured by rain. Clear swirl marks (including several loops) were evident in a field north of S. Sandbar Road in Gray Sky satellite imagery near the start of the tornado. As the tornado continued southward, it uprooted a grove of trees in the vicinity of S. Sandbar Road, consistent with wind speeds near 90 mph. Sporadic tree damage was noted in high-resolution satellite imagery south of the Kankakee River, just to the east of a subdivision on Bittersweet Drive, before the tornado dissipated.

Scattered severe thunderstorms produced numerous tornadoes and large to giant hail as they moved across northern Illinois during the late afternoon and evening of March 10th. Included in the 9 total tornadoes in northeast Illinois that day is an EF-3 which tracked from the south side of Kankakee into Newton and Jasper counties in Indiana and devastated a portion of Aroma Park. There were two primary corridors of large hail; one extending from northern Will County into the city of Chicago, which produced hail upwards of 4.8 inches in diameter, and another from central Livingston County extending east across Kankakee County. Nearly a dozen individual reports of hail greater than 4 inches came out of this southernmost corridor, and a 6.6 inch hailstone found in Kankakee is pending as the new Illinois state record.