Snow, cold and wintry weather have been on our minds a lot lately, but Illinois had more tornadoes than any other state in the country last year — and they can happen throughout the year. The National Weather Service reports that 120 tornadoes were confirmed in Illinois in 2023. And every county in the Chicago area saw at least one.
Illinois State climatologist Trent Ford spoke with WBEZ’s Melba Lara about why the state has so many twisters.
This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Is there an explanation for why last year was so active?
“There’s not one particular reason why we were so active last year. When we’re coming out of a La Niña year and going into the spring, they can be a bit more active as far as the total number of tornadoes in parts of the South up to the Midwest. But that’s just one kind of potential influence. We were very, very mild and in some cases warm in January, February and even part of March. And when we look at the monthly distribution of tornadoes compared to average, we were way above average January, February, March. And then for the rest of the year, we were near to below average. So some of that just persistent warm, relatively humid air that kept affecting this region early in the year played an important role in how often we had severe weather.”
Why did Illinois see more tornadoes than other parts of the country?
“It wasn’t anything that had changed over other years, but when we look at kind of climatologically over many, many years, tornadoes happen almost everywhere on earth, but the hottest spot on Earth is really the central U.S. From the Rockies down to the Mississippi Valley, we have sloping terrain. We have systems that are tracking from west to east that can bring us to different clashes of air masses and we have a consistent flow of humid, warm air flowing off the Gulf of Mexico that can supply the instability to create tornadoes. All those ingredients really maximize together in the central U.S.”
There’s this pervasive belief among people that live in the area that it’s impossible for a tornado to hit the city of Chicago proper. Now, we’ve debunked this myth before, but one more time probably can hurt.
“No, you can scream it from the top of whatever, the highest hill in Illinois is that there’s nothing protecting the city of Chicago from a tornado. The lake, the urban heat island, the river, the Sears Tower — whatever the myth is, there’s nothing protecting it there. If you live in the Loop, if you live in Bronzeville, if you live in River North, it doesn’t matter. You should be ready for tornadoes and severe weather all year round.”
Lauren Frost is WBEZ’s afternoon news producer. Follow her @frostlaur.
