TornadoLookup

Home / Illinois / Ford

EF0 tornado in Ford County, Illinois

Tornado May 18, 2026 · Ford County, Illinois

EF0
Rating
1.0 mi
Path length
80 yd
Path width
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 80 yards (0.05 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 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 brief tornado with estimated peak winds of 85 mph touched down northeast of the intersection of County Road E 100N and County Road N 1400E. The tornado moved across fields and then just west of County Road 1500 E, the tornado lifted an outbuilding off a cinderblock foundation and dropped it several feet away where it was destroyed. Windows on a nearby home were broken, possibly by debris from the outbuilding. The top of an evergreen tree had some missing tree limbs. Several utility poles were broken along County Road 1500 E and then tornado lifted in a field.

The wider storm

A line of strong to severe thunderstorms moved across northern Illinois during the late morning of May 18th producing severe wind gusts, wind damage and one brief tornado.

Began near Perdueville (40.4150, -88.1910).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1333514. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

Tornadoes near your address

See every tornado that passed near a place you know, measured to its path.