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EF1 tornado in Perry County, Illinois

Tornado June 8, 2009 · Perry County, Illinois

EF1

Rating

4.8 mi

Whole path

300 yd

Path width

$26K

Damage as recorded

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

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 300 yards (0.17 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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

This tornado downed hundreds of trees over rural Perry County. The tornado was embedded within an area of widespread straight-line wind damage. Peak winds were estimated near 95 mph close to the Franklin County border along Route 14. The average path width was about 200 yards. The tornado continued into western Franklin County.

The wider storm

Thunderstorms rapidly developed along a surface frontal boundary from central Illinois into southern Missouri. Extreme instability and favorable wind shear ahead of the activity promoted organized and isolated supercell storms.

Began near Du Quoin (38.0200, -89.1749).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

1 more tornado the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

EF0 Perry County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 171898. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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