Illinois officially broke its record for the number of tornadoes in a year, with the National Weather Service reporting 173 twisters.
“We average about 50 to 60 tornadoes a year in Illinois, and each of the last four years we’ve gotten over 100,” said Trent Ford, an Illinois State Climatologist. “We broke the record with 142 in 2024 and now we’ve just done it again this year.”
“Illinois has now had more than 100 tornadoes four years in a row,” Ford added in a recent report. “The state had only previously surpassed 100 tornadoes four times between 1950 and 2022.”
And while Vermilion County has only had a handful of twisters, the area has dealt with flooding, straight-line winds, and a tornado from June 11 had wind speeds as high as 110 mph according to the NWS preliminary damage reports in Fithian. The same storm system produced an EF1 twister in the Kickapoo State Recreation area snapping around 250 trees, and the tornado lifted according to the NWS long Hungry Hollow Rd. before moving into Danville. The damage estimates in the city were determined to be from 80-100 mph straight-line winds.
IS CLIMATE CHANGE RESPONSIBLE?
Ford says partially. He says that while there is a distinct weather pattern showing more outbreaks in the past four years, it does not match perfectly with what models would predict from climate change alone.
“A logical person would put those together and say, ‘Oh, this is climate change,’ but it’s really not that simple, because this isn’t the pattern that we would expect from a changing climate,” Ford said. “We’ve seen this kind of frequent weather pattern more persistent on top of a changing climate… so kind of a combination of both of them.”
Ford says it is ‘very possible’ Illinois will go back to having 50-60 tornadoes per year versus the triple-digit numbers the state has seen in the last four years, “especially if it’s the weather variability that’s playing a larger role here.”
Ed Kieser, a local meteorologist with Illinois Public Media, with over 40 years of experience, agrees with Ford, but says the data is showing a shift in the area referred to as Tornado Alley.
“I can say that it does appear that Tornado Alley has been shifting eastward over the last couple of decades,” Kieser said.
“The beginning of 2023 through June 30 of this year, it appears that Illinois has had 586 tornadoes, which leads the nation,” Kieser said. “Texas is second with 444, so Illinois leads by a substantial margin, which is unusual. Texas, on average, has always been the leader, in part because of its location, and also the fact that Texas is so big in size.’’
Kieser, who notes that Texas has had only 24 tornadoes this season, says there are more being noticed due to technological advances, but there is a distinct change.
“People now can snap images with cell phone cameras, and those get counted where maybe some tornadoes in the past were missed, but the numbers that we’ve seen in recent years are so much larger that there is a real increase in the number of tornadoes,” Kieser said.
Kieser says even with the shift eastward of tornado alley, it could be attributable to climate change. However, he says he does not ‘attribute one event’ to climate change. And while the flash flooding that happened in Vermilion County recently is not necessarily a sign of climate change, the impacts of climate change will bring torrential downpours.
“The climate in Danville has gotten wetter, but the bigger impact has been an increase in the intensity of rainfall,” he said.
And in June, Ford says in a repot that ‘frequent, often heavy, rain blessed or plagued central and northern Illinois.,” He reports rainfall was as high as 12 inches in places in central Illinois during June.
“The heavy rainfall caused widespread flooding on the Illinois, Mackinaw, and Vermilion rivers, among others, in central Illinois,” Ford says. “The Illinois River at Havana reached its highest stage (19.82 feet) since 2020.”
EL NIÑO EFFECTS
Ford says we are not yet seeing any changes from an El Niño pattern.
“Although we are now officially in an El Niño pattern, it usually takes a little while for the pattern to noticeably impact our weather here in the Midwest,” Ford said. “Additionally, even a full-strength El Niño/La Niña tends to have minimal impacts on our summer weather, with more of an influence on fall and winter.”
Kieser agrees saying this winter will likely be mild, but predicting long-form forecasts is ‘nearly impossible.’
“The easiest thing for me to take to the bank is when we have a strong El Niño, winter is going to very likely be milder than average, warmer than average,” Kieser said. “There’s a strong signal between a strong El Niño and milder than typical weather in our part of the world.”
Both Keiser and Ford say there are things you can do to protect yourself during tornado season.
“We can do a lot to protect ourselves and our loved ones from severe weather,” Ford said. “The vast majority of fatalities related to tornadoes are not from people being sucked out of their homes, Twister-style, but from people just being hit in the head with flying debris.”
Practical steps include making a plan of where to go during a warning and while taking a video may be interesting, the flying debris can be deadly.
“I’ve actually seen videos of people that have been knocked out, you know, this video ends when they’ve been hit by something,” Keiser said. “It’s just like you don’t want to go into a lion’s den at the zoo and take a close-up picture, because the lion will probably eat you.”
Even if the coming El Niño brings a quieter winter season, the experts say the long-term trend is clear — warmer, wetter conditions are stacking the odds toward more tornado-friendly setups and heavier rain.