50-Plus Tornadoes Pummel Midwest in Late Season Outbreak

In a rare late season outbreak, more than 50 tornadoes blasted across Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. on Nov. 17. Preliminary estimates by the catastrophe modeling firm RMS put insured losses from the widespread event at more than $1 billion.

It was initially thought that as many as 80 tornadoes had been spawned by the violent weather system that was responsible for six deaths in Illinois and two in Michigan. By Nov. 25, however, the National Weather Service had whittled that number down.

At press time, the NWS had identified 24 tornadoes in Illinois, with 14 being significant (EF-2 or stronger). Of these, two were EF-4 and three were EF-3. One supercell in Illinois produced four tornadoes, the NWS said, that impacted Pekin, Washington, Dana, Coal City, Manhattan and Frankfort.

Washington, Ill., was particularly hard hit with an EF-4 tornado that had maximum estimated winds of 190 mph. The tornado was the strongest on record to occur in Illinois during the month of November since 1950, according to the NWS.

Indiana experienced 28 tornadoes on Nov. 17 — the third largest number of tornadoes to occur on one day in state history, the NWS said. It was also the largest tornado outbreak to occur in the state in November.

In central Indiana, the outbreak included one tornado that was rated EF-3, eight EF-2 twisters, five EF-1 tornadoes and one EF-0 tornado.

In Illinois, Gov. Pat Quinn had declared 15 counties major disaster areas as of Nov. 25. The governor’s office said emergency response teams had identified 2,441 homes in Illinois that were damaged, including 781 homes that were destroyed. Nearly 1,000 homes across the state were uninhabitable.

Gov. Quinn requested a federal disaster declaration for Champaign, Douglas, Fayette, Grundy, Jasper, LaSalle, Massac, Pope, Tazewell, Vermilion, Wabash, Washington, Wayne, Will and Woodford counties.

“The lives of thousands of people across Illinois were torn apart by this deadly outbreak of tornadoes,” Gov. Quinn said in a statement released by his office. “We expedited the damage assessment process in order to submit this request and the required documentation as soon as possible. I encourage President Obama to quickly approve this request and help our communities recover and rebuild.”

RMS reported that the late season tornado outbreak will likely be the costliest severe weather event for the insurance industry ever to occur in the United States in November.

The recent “big tornado outbreak is yet another atypical storm of what has been an unusual 2013 severe weather season,” said Matthew Nielsen, director and meteorologist at RMS.

Before Nov. 17, the 2013 season had been one of the calmest in decades in terms of the number of tornadoes, according to RMS.

Weather events occurring this year, however, have been particularly damaging, with at least five severe weather outbreaks causing at least $1 billion in damages each. RMS ranked this as the third highest annual total in United States recorded history behind the 2011 and 2012 seasons.

The most expensive and deadliest outbreak was the May 18-22 event, driven mostly by the EF-5 tornado that devastated Moore, Okla., RMS reported.