Twisters

At any time in Illinois, you might see any number of things cruising down your street. Vehicles obviously, the occasional dog walker, exercise freaks...oh and tornadoes. That's what one family saw zooming down their street recently.

Most residents in west-central Illinois likely had no idea there was a dangerous storm moving through the area overnight early Saturday morning. But, weather survey teams have confirmed there was a 200 yard wide tornado that struck near Marceline, Illinois.

This is one record you never want to hold. A Missouri man was carried over 1,300 feet by a violent tornado, yet lived to tell about it.

Normally, being #1 at something is a good thing. That's not true in this case. Surprisingly, Illinois has become the tornado capital of America and the numbers so far in 2023 prove that point.

Almost no one was prepared. It was early morning in a small Illinois town on March 19, 1948 when the ominous clouds rolled in. A monster tornado dropped onto an unsuspecting Illinois town leaving only 20% of it standing once the winds subsided.

Early in the afternoon of May 22, 2011, meteorologists knew a serious weather situation was developing near Joplin, Missouri. By nightfall, 158 souls were gone as a killer EF-5 mile-wide twister had carved a massive path of destruction straight through the heart of the city.

There are some very scientific ways to measure the strength of a tornado. A new ranking attempts to combine some major factors to determine the strongest twisters Missouri has seen in the past decade. The biggest of them all was a 1,800 foot wide beast.

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a sunny Saturday in May of 2003 when the sky began to growl. Large anvil-like clouds began to explode overhead and by the time the day and night were done, numerous tornadoes wreaked havoc in Missouri and Illinois with a monster EF-2 roaring through Canton, Missouri and Lima, Illinois.

It began as an iconic Kansas sight. It was a tornado spotted by storm chasers near Emporia, Kansas in the distance as if it were painted against the sunset. It would become a nighttime monster that would also be captured on home security cameras.

It was thin by tornado standards, but it did plenty of damage during its very brief time on the Earth. New video shows an Iowa tornado with the view from nearly directly underneath the spiraling vortex overhead.