4/1 - 4/12 Severe Weather Threat

[Jaycee]

There's going to be more fatalities i think. Watched an interview of a guy helping out around the town, and im afraid he hinted that there were more. Just heartbreaking. It's eerie watching the tornado live, and knowing that its taking lives in the process. Horrible. It's so weird seeing this happen in Northern Illinois, let alone in April. That tornado will probably be an F4 just based on what I've seen in photos. Unreal outbreak, surprised they didn't have atleast a Moderate risk today, screw this enhanced stuff.

[Maxim]

There's going to be more fatalities i think. Watched an interview of a guy helping out around the town, and im afraid he hinted that there were more. Just heartbreaking. It's eerie watching the tornado live, and knowing that its taking lives in the process. Horrible. It's so weird seeing this happen in Northern Illinois, let alone in April. That tornado will probably be an F4 just based on what I've seen in photos. Unreal outbreak, surprised they didn't have atleast a Moderate risk today, screw this enhanced stuff.

Yeah, they should have gone with a moderate risk. They always seem to be too conservative it seems.

 

If this tornado had formed just a bit farther east, I'm sure it would have been much more deadly. It went over mostly unpopulated areas. Nonetheless, pretty tragic.

[Geos]

Noticed some minor damage and of course some localized flooding this morning. Few roads flooded over just west of here. Saw a couple small trees snapped off at ground level and some limbs up to 4" broke off. Also saw a few light poles and a flag pole bent over as well in Kenosha. There was probably some wind gusts up near 60 mph in the area last night.

 

A little bit west and it probably would have hit the southeast Rockford metro and if it would have formed closer to DeKalb is would have gone into the more populated Kane County. It formed in the "best" place with regards to lowest population.

 

The storm probably would have been sustained longer further south and east where the inflow would not have been interrupted by the east winds off the lake last night.

[NEJeremy]

There's going to be more fatalities i think. Watched an interview of a guy helping out around the town, and im afraid he hinted that there were more. Just heartbreaking. It's eerie watching the tornado live, and knowing that its taking lives in the process. Horrible. It's so weird seeing this happen in Northern Illinois, let alone in April. That tornado will probably be an F4 just based on what I've seen in photos. Unreal outbreak, surprised they didn't have atleast a Moderate risk today, screw this enhanced stuff.

If we were still on the old scale, this would have been a slight risk with a 30% probs. Slight risks before were 15-30% and now it's 15% for slight and 30% for enhanced. Moderate risk is still 45% probs and I don't think it should have been a moderate risk yesterday. There weren't enough tornado reports to make it a moderate risk even if one of the tornadoes were stronger. Most of the reports from yesterday are duplicate reports from the same tornado. Also the tornado watch boxes for that area outlined the risk for a couple of intense tornadoes. For the most part yesterday when you looked at the national map, there were never more than a handful of warnings going on at one time. This was a higer end slight risk, but not a moderate risk to me IMO.

[Tom]

EF-4 may be the final rating following final review tomorrow...

 

 

The preliminary rating of the tornado that struck Fairdale yesterday is an EF-4. Only 2 percent of all tornadoes reach this strength.

NWS DAMAGE SURVEY FOR 04/09/15 TORNADO EVENT UPDATE...
...NORTH CENTRAL ILLINOIS TORNADO PRELIMINARY RATED AN EF-4...

NWS METEOROLOGISTS HAVE CONDUCTED A GROUND SURVEY COVERING THE MOST
HEAVILY DAMAGED LOCATIONS. BASED ON EARLY FINDINGS THE TORNADO THAT
TRACKED FROM NEAR ROCHELLE TO NEAR BELVIDERE...AND IMPACTED THE
COMMUNITY OF FAIRDALE...APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN A SINGLE LONG TRACK
TORNADO. PRELIMINARY SURVEY ASSESSMENT INDICATES THIS TORNADO
WAS AN EF-4. AN AERIAL SURVEY WILL BE CONDUCTED
TOMORROW...WEATHER PERMITTING...TO CONFIRM A FINAL RATING.

AT LEAST ONE SATELLITE TORNADO ASSOCIATED WITH THIS LARGER TORNADO
WAS FOUND THUS FAR AND THERE MAY HAVE BEEN OTHERS. AN AERIAL
SURVEY WILL HELP US ASCERTAIN WHETHER THERE WERE ANY ADDITIONAL
TORNADOES ON THIS DAY.

.TORNADO...

RATING: EF-4 (PRELIMINARY)
ESTIMATED PEAK WIND: 180-200 MPH
PATH LENGTH /STATUTE/: TBD
PATH WIDTH /MAXIMUM/: 0.5 MILE (PRELIMINARY)
FATALITIES: 2
INJURIES: 22

START DATE:APRIL 09 2015
START TIME:TBD
START LOCATION:TBD

END DATE:APRIL 09 2015
END TIME:TBD
END LOCATION:TBD

[Geos]

Map of the tornado tracks.

 

[Maxim]

If we were still on the old scale, this would have been a slight risk with a 30% probs. Slight risks before were 15-30% and now it's 15% for slight and 30% for enhanced. Moderate risk is still 45% probs and I don't think it should have been a moderate risk yesterday. There weren't enough tornado reports to make it a moderate risk even if one of the tornadoes were stronger. Most of the reports from yesterday are duplicate reports from the same tornado. Also the tornado watch boxes for that area outlined the risk for a couple of intense tornadoes. For the most part yesterday when you looked at the national map, there were never more than a handful of warnings going on at one time. This was a higer end slight risk, but not a moderate risk to me IMO.

Probs were at 45% at one point. It definitely would have been a moderate risk with the old scale.

[NEJeremy]

Probs were at 45% at one point. It definitely would have been a moderate risk with the old scale.

They were never at 45% on day one. There was one outlook on day 2 that had a huge area of 45% that was lowered for day one. There were basically 2 tornadic cells that day that produced anything other than brief spinups. There were a lot of storm reports that day but that's due to such a large area that had reports and there weren't a lot of high end reports either. IMO a slight risk was justified.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/archive/2015/day1otlk_20150409_2000.html