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Severe weather that swept Illinois on Tuesday produced at least six tornadoes, the largest number of rare January tornadoes recorded in the state since 1989, the National Weather Service said.
Five of the tornadoes occurred in central Illinois in or around the city of Decatur, while the sixth touched down near the Ford County community of Gibson City, the weather service said Wednesday.
Staff from the agency's Chicago office planned to survey storm damage Wednesday in the Gibson City area, where at least two homesteads suffered damage and power lines were knocked down. The weather service reported that tornado was an EF-1, with estimated peak winds of 100 mph.
Tuesday's storms damaged a former bowling alley in Decatur, tearing siding off the building and leaving its parking lot strewn with debris and insulation, the Decatur Herald & Review reported.
Although the final number of tornadoes from Tuesday's outbreak is not necessarily six, the weather service said the six confirmed twisters were the most tornadoes produced by a January severe weather event in Illinois since eight were recorded on Jan. 7, 1989.
The weather service said the six tornadoes were spawned by “mini supercell thunderstorms," which are rotating thunderstorms often capable of producing severe weather.
How rare is it?
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Tuesday's tornadoes were the first January tornado in the state since Jan. 11, 2020 when an EF-1 tornado was reported near in Union County in southern Illinois. With at least six confirmed so far, it also marks the most tornadoes in the month of January in the state since Jan. 7, 1989.
While the final number of tornadoes for this event is not necessarily six, with six confirmed, this is the most tornadoes in a January event for the state of Illinois since eight on January 7, 1989.
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The weather service noted the tornado near Gibson City was only the third January tornado reported in the Chicago office's region since 1950. Two others were documented on Jan. 25, 1950, in Kankakee County and on Jan. 7, 2008, in McHenry and Boone counties.
"Wintertime tornadoes are rare as far north as the NWS Chicago forecast area, although one did occur last winter, an EF0 tornado in Lake County, Indiana on December 10, 2021," the NWS Chicago said.
