at 11:11 AM by Pierce Larkin

Significant Tornado Impacts N. Illinois Town

For over a week, yesterday had been highlighted as a day for significant severe weather over the nation’s heartland. The models had been honing in on an area in and around the Iowa/Illinois region, and the SPC had that accurately pinned down over a week out from the event itself.

While we can marvel at the excellent forecasting used for this event, a much more tragic thing happen last evening in the northern Illinois area. Within the warm sector ahead of the main squall line and cold front, several individual discrete supercells formed within the highly sheared environment. 

Zloop
A loop of the supercells across Northern Illinois last evening. h/t NWS Chicago

 

These occurred along the strong warm front draped across the region in which wind shear and moisture is maximized, and thus creating an environment favorable for tornadoes. The most dominant of these supercells formed and raced northeastward, just to the north of Rochelle, Illinois. This dropped a long-tracked tornado that moved just to the north of Rochelle, and impacted towns such as Fairdale and Kirkland.  

 

 

Unfortunately, while the tornado itself displayed incredible structure and beauty from a meteorological standpoint, it took one life and destroyed many homes in these areas.

 

 

I am quite sad for the people impacted by this event, and hope you all keep them in your thoughts and prayers over the next few days as I can’t imagine what they are going through right now. For more on this tornado itself, and others last evening, the NWS Chicago has a page up about it here.