Inhabitants comb the wreckage of the town of Griffin, Indiana, in the wake of the tri-state tornado, March 1925. The tornado began in Missouri on the 18th March, and tore through Illinois and Indiana, killing 689 people. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Tuesday will mark a somber anniversary, as 100 years have passed since the deadliest tornado in U.S. history devastated Illinois.
On March 18, 1925, the “Tri-State Tornado” tore a path of destruction across Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, killing nearly 700 people and devastating countless communities in the region.
According to Britannica, the tornado formed near a community called Ellington, Missouri, in the early afternoon hours. It then tore a path across southeastern Missouri, resulting in at least 11 deaths before it crossed the Mississippi River and entered Illinois.
It isn't often that tornadoes cross the Mississippi River, but there have been several dozen reported instances that have occurred since the 1950s, according to WQAD meteorologist Andrew Stutzke.
After the tornado crossed the Mississippi, it wreaked devastation across a wide swath of Illinois, including its destruction of the town of Murphysboro. According to the state of Illinois’ archives, it is believed that 234 people were killed when the tornado slammed into the community, including dozens of children, before pushing on to the northeast.
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The tornado also killed 41 people in DeSoto, including 33 children in a school, and then hit West Frankfort, where 148 people died, according to state archives.
Ultimately, the tornado crossed the Wabash River in Illinois and then crossed into Indiana, resulting in a total of 695 fatalities across the three states.
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According to Illinois records, more than 600 of those fatalities occurred within the state, with more than 2,000 injuries reported.
According to Britannica, the tornado was on the ground for more than three and a half hours, traveling an estimated 219 miles. It is believed to have been at least a mile wide, and may have reached wind speeds of roughly 300 miles per hour, which would classify it as an EF-5 tornado on the Enhanced Fujita Scale.
It is estimated that the tornado caused $16.5 million in damage, or more than $300,000,000 in today's dollars.
Shockingly, when this tornado hit the Midwest, the very word “tornado” was actually banned from weather forecasts, according to Pacific Legal. The word was banned because officials feared it would cause panic, according to the publication.
That ban was erased in 1950, nearly 25 years after the devastating twister.
Since 1950, only two other EF-5 tornadoes have ever struck the state of Illinois, according to the National Weather Service. The first of those hit in December 1957 in Sunfield, with the other occurring Aug. 28, 1990, in suburban Plainfield.
The Sunfield tornado was part of a massive outbreak of more than two-dozen tornadoes, but stunningly only one person was killed in that particular twister.
The tornado in Plainfield killed 29 people and injured more than 300 others, according to officials.
