Illinois tops nation in tornadoes in ’23 with 119

Some Illinoisans might have gotten used to their phones blaring out tornado warning alerts this year.

The alerts have become quite frequent throughout the state since spring, many alerting of actual twisters.

To be exact, 119 tornadoes have been confirmed across Illinois so far in 2023 — the most of any state in the nation, according to the National Weather Service.

But don’t be alarmed, says NWS meteorologist Lee Carlaw, noting that many of the events this year were small, short-lived tornadoes categorized as EF-0 or EF-unknown.

Illinois also routinely ranks among the top 10 states in tornadoes each year despite being geographically outside Tornado Alley, which primarily includes parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Texas.

“It has been an unusually active severe weather season for us, truncated in spits and spurts by drought, but I would say that weather trends obviously change from month to month and year to year,” Carlaw said.

“It just depends on where the storm belt sets up,” he continued. “Sometimes it’s in our area, sometimes it is in Tornado Alley, sometimes it’s the Deep South. In this particular instance, over the last several months, it just so happened the storm tracks have taken most of the tornadoes into the upper Midwest.”

One day in the spring is responsible for putting Illinois on top.

The tornado season, typically from April through August, got off to a terrible start this year on March 31, when 37 twisters tore through the state. Four people were killed in the storms, including a man who died when a roof collapsed at a packed concert venue in Belvidere, east of Rockford.

A round of storms produced another 13 tornadoes in the Chicago area July 12, including two near O’Hare International Airport.

One of the twisters near O’Hare reached the ground “intermittently,” meeting a threshold of lasting at least one minute to be considered a tornado, the weather service said.

Carlaw said meteorologists can’t necessarily pinpoint a cause for the large increase in tornado events this year (there were 39 last year and 82 the year before). 

Instead, he says, “It’s weather.

“In this case, the jet stream lifted a little farther north, the storm tracking a little farther north than usual, and that’s why you get a smattering or higher-density of tornadoes up in this part of the region,” Carlaw said.

Illinois twice this century surpassed 100 tornadoes in a year. In 2006, there were 144 twisters reported, there were 22 tornadoes the year before and 23 the year after. And in 2003, the state saw 136 tornadoes.

Following Illinois with the most tornadoes this year are Alabama with 91; Texas with 78; Nebraska with 67; and Iowa with 64.