Damage and Comments on 6-5 Tornadoes

Damage pictures from the tornado that passed through Streator, IL can be found here.

A copy of the NWS PNS statement can be found here.

National Weather Service lead forecaster Gino Izzi and I covered the Magnolia to Streator damage and came up with high-end EF2. There were a few arguments for EF3 at a location in Streator where a 8" cinder block (with steel reinforcements) garage was partially destroyed. Given that all of the surrounding damage was indicative of EF2, Gino and I did not feel comfortable assigning EF3 in that location. East of Streator, there were 6 high tension power lines down. DOD/DI for these lines is low end EF3, but there were no structures to confirm any of this damage so I'm not sure if Gino is counting it. According to everything we can piece together (including reports from Paul Sirvatka) the low-level rotation was phenomenal with intermittent touchdowns. Maybe the velocities just off the surface were EF3 allowing the high elevation/tension wires to become susceptible.

Things to note:

1) There is no special recipe for tornadoes :)

2) LLJ is *very* important

3) WFs in IL are magic

4) WFs in IL are very magic

I've archived a bunch of data from the setup and hope to analyze it in the coming months after I finish working on my thesis.