July 14-15, 2024: Line of Storms Produces Swaths of Wind Damage and Embedded Tornadoes (2024)

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July 14-15, 2024: Line of Storms Produces Swaths of Wind Damage and Embedded Tornadoes? ›

July 14, 2024: Line of Storms Produces Swaths of Wind Damage and Embedded Tornadoes. A line of thunderstorms moved across northern Illinois and northwest Indiana during the night of Sunday, July 14, producing swaths of wind damage, several embedded tornadoes, and flash flooding.

With 32 tornadoes, the July 15, 2024 derecho was the most prolific tornado event to impact the NWS Chicago forecast area in recorded history. The previous record was 22 tornadoes in a single event, set by the June 30, 2014 and March 31, 2023 tornado outbreaks.

Parts of the Midwest are cleaning up after severe thunderstorms barreled through the region on the night of Monday, July 15, 2024, bringing hurricane-force winds and multiple tornadoes around Chicago.

This weather event broke the daily record for tornado touchdowns in the Chicagoland forecasting area, where approximately 33 tornados touched down in the Chicagoland area and other surrounding areas. The outbreak produced mostly weak EF0/EF1 tornados, though one EF2 tornado did drop down in the Channahon-Matteson area.

At 10:23 p.m., a tornado began in LaGrange and tracked through Brookfield, Riverside, and Berwyn before ending in Cicero. Only trees were damaged. At 10:31 p.m., a tornado began just west of Midway International Airport and tracked over the airport—where it moved a 737 jet plane and slammed it into a jet bridge.

Texas is by far America's most active state for tornadoes, averaging 151 twisters each year. In a distant second place is Kansas, with an annual average of 91 tornadoes.

During April and May 2024, the jet stream often dipped southward in the western U.S. before turning back to the northeast across the Plains. That's a pattern favorable for producing tornadoes in the central U.S. In the area east of the jet stream's southern dip, air rises.

Tornado alley is a cluster of states in the midwestern US where tornadoes are most likely to occur. Tornado alley is typically identified as including parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio.

Tornado Alley is a part of the central United States with a unique combination of geographic and meteorological factors that make it more susceptible to tornadoes. This area encompasses much of northern Texas northward through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri and parts of Louisiana, Iowa, Nebraska, and eastern Colorado.

An "EF-Unknown" (EFU) category was later added for tornadoes that cannot be rated due to a lack of damage evidence. As with the Fujita scale, the Enhanced Fujita scale remains a damage scale and only a proxy for actual wind speeds.

Which state is likely to have the most tornadoes per year responses? ›

At a Glance. Texas and Kansas average the most tornadoes each year. Other parts of the Plains, South and Midwest also have a high number of tornadoes annually. The Northeast and West have the lowest number of annual tornadoes.

The most common month for Illinois tornados is April. Central and Southeast Illinois are the most likely to be affected by tornados.

A Derecho is a very long lived and damaging thunderstorm. A storm is classified as a derecho if wind damage swath extends more than 240 miles and has wind gusts of at least 58 mph or greater along most of the length of the storm's path. For more on derechos visit the Storm Prediction Center's derecho page.

1. Introduction. Oklahoma City (OKC), by virtue of its large areal extent and location near the heart of "tornado alley," has earned a reputation over the years as one of the more tornado-prone cities in the United States.

Traditionally, Tornado Alley is considered as running roughly north from Texas through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska to South Dakota, and often including neighboring states to the east and west.

The tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri on May 22, 2011 was an EF5. It began at 5:41 PM local time and lasted for 32 minutes. It first touched down in the southern part of the city, near the intersection of JJ Highway and West 32 Street, and tracked eastward, causing damage for 13 miles.

There hasn't been a tornado rated EF5 in the U.S. since the Oklahoma City/Moore tornado on May 20, 2013. Almost 90% of tornadoes from 2000 through 2022 were weak — rated F/EF0 or F/EF1 — but they're still capable of light to moderate damage to trees and homes, and significant damage to mobile homes.

On average, there are 213 confirmed tornadoes in June and 119 confirmed tornadoes in July.

– Monday marked 11 years since a catastrophic EF-5 tornado was last documented in the U.S., continuing what is already the longest span between "5-rated" twisters in historical records dating to 1950. The nation's last EF-5 tornado struck Moore, Oklahoma, on May 20, 2013.