Rare November tornado/severe weather outbreak in Midwest on Sunday

Appears Illinois and Indiana were hit quite hard with severe weather and tornadoes yesterday (Sunday, Nov. 17) with at least one EF-4 twister in Illinois and the brunt of the tornado reports abnormally far north for this time of year. There were also very widespread high severe thunderstorm winds. An NFL game is Chicago was delayed as people took shelter.

Preliminary severe weather reports (both thunderstorm winds and tornadoes):
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/reports/131117_rpts.html

Any thoughts and/or personal observations (if you live in the affected area)?

I'm from Ohio, had a tornado watch and a nasty severe thunderstorm wind gust, but no damage around.

what a strange EE topic that for some reason I can relate to..

IL, heard a lot of tornado warnings but nothing happened around here aside from wind fucking up trees and stuff as usual. On the whole I was underwhelmed.

Yep about an hour southwest of me. Coincidentally I was asked to go to one of the areas (Peacon, IL) for the weekend so he can visit his gf. Chose not to go. Then it was hit by a tornado. I think I made the right call not to spend the weekend there. The news has found debris 60 miles from the affected areas. The tornado was moving 55 mph (that doesn't mean the wind).

There have been more and more tornadoes in my specific area over the years. My uncle had a tornado a mile from him, obliterated a neighborhood maybe 3 years ago. That neighborhood is still in pieces with a lot of blue tarps over missing pieces of house.

As for this specific tornado, so far I think 1 person is dead and a dozen injuries. In terms of death and injuries, it was not nearly as bad as it could have been in a town of 15,000 people.

Were you under one of the (PDS) Tornado Watches?

Weather is big interest of mine, hence a contributing reason to posting this here.

The reports maps and observations from IL shows some areas slammed while others largely missed the worst so you're one of the lucky ones. :)

The tornado path was 'projected' directly toward me... but I knew it would dissipate well before it reached me. We just had high winds / wind gusts, heavy rain and so on. Luckily my gf had us out all day in the rain. But I shouldn't complain when others don't have homes now. :-(

geo said:

Yep about an hour southwest of me. Coincidentally I was asked to go to one of the areas (Peacon, IL) for the weekend so he can visit his gf. Chose not to go. Then it was hit by a tornado. I think I made the right call not to spend the weekend there. The news has found debris 60 miles from the affected areas. The tornado was moving 55 mph (that doesn't mean the wind).

There have been more and more tornadoes in my specific area over the years. My uncle had a tornado a mile from him, obliterated a neighborhood maybe 3 years ago. That neighborhood is still in pieces with a lot of blue tarps over missing pieces of house.

As for this specific tornado, so far I think 1 person is dead and a dozen injuries. In terms of death and injuries, it was not nearly as bad as it could have been in a town of 15,000 people.

Spring tornadoes are no uncommon visitor to the Midwest, but yesterday's assault was intense for any time of the year and far out of season at that.

Reports indicate very intense severe winds around Chicago and tornadoes just to the south.

I can understand how a tornado would happen yesterday. It went suddenly from let's say 45 degrees to 67. But I think tornadoes are formed by high / low pressures meeting. It was just odd in November to jump to 67 degrees overnight.

From what I see it was quite warm from Saturday afternoon right through the night. Then it was almost 70 before the storms hit, and ominously sticky as well, with a quick drop in temperatures after they passed.

It's a case of the ingredients all coming together in a place and at a time of year during which such rarely happens. Not saying yesterday's weather was exceptional for what was actually going on, just that it was a major outbreak and unusual to see things come together this way in November.

Our local news has run down how many November tornadoes there have been over the years. They didn't seem that uncommon, but I guess its a slow news day really.

IL also sits on a newly discovered fault line bigger than the San Andreas fault if that interests you at all.

Wow don't want to get too OT but I hope no big earthquakes!

The only listing on November tornadoes I found in IL was for the Northern IL area (including Chicago). It looks like 11/12/1965 was a really bad day around there!

I wonder if either IL or IN set new records for tornadoes on a single day in November yesterday. I know in IN the current (or old) record is 11/22/1992 but Sunday looks as if it may surpass it.

The US nationwide record for most tornadoes in November is 150, set in both 2004 and then tied the very next year in 2005. But only 2005 was very active over several regions of the country; the 2004 count was almost all in southern states. That is for the whole month, all areas of the country. Comparatively the NORMAL number of tornadoes in May (nationwide) is around double that. So it's a bit of a secondary season, but nowhere close to the primary mid/late spring season.

As a former resident of St. Louis, I can vouch for the fact that weather in the Midwest can vary wildly within the span of a week, especially during spring and autumn. It seemed like the storms were even more severe during the last 2 years I lived there. I recall going from shirtsleeves to thundersnow back in 2007 without much of a gap in between.

So November tornadoes don't even surprise me anymore. I gave up trying to guess after that snapshot earthquake happened.

Oddly enough, SoCal weather bores me. I miss the unpredictability.

The Midwest is definitely a region of extremes, no denying that. But from a historical standpoint the magnitude of yesterday's severe weather was highly unusual for this region in November. It would not be too impressive in the height of the spring season, though it would definitely still be regarded as a significant severe weather episode at any time of year. Not only the tornadoes, but the enormous number of severe thunderstorm wind reports as well.

While late, November is not "out of season" for tornadoes. We've had a couple in December, here, though we are further south where it's slightly more likely.

Spring and fall as a whole are the tornado seasons because of the shifting seasonal weather patterns bringing repeated violently opposed fronts that stir up supercell thunderstorms. It's just usually late spring, and early fall, statistically.

I'm in Ohio as well, and where I'm at it was just very windy. We had a bit of rain and that was it. Some people lost power too, but I was unaffected.

Canada here: We've had some really heavy winds last night and all of today, still windy now. It made work especially tedious with power failures and surges.

I'm not sure about that it's common or slow news day bandwagon geo is trying to argue for. The link in the OP is up to 91 tornadoes now, and well above 500 for wind.

I've also read the two EF4 storms in IL are the strongest recorded tornadoes in November for that state.

Also I found someone at Accuweather make a connection between the strength of the outbreak and the typhoon (Haiyan). Watch the video. I actually find it to be rather plausible!

http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/meteomadness/next-storm-will-be-a-snow-maker/20074926

I live in Ohio. I was sitting on my couch watching tv. Wind started to howl outside so I went to my door and just watched. Rain was going two different directions, I've never seen that before. I stood and just watched for about 15 minutes and then I checked my phone to a dozen texts saying "take cover! Tornado is coming your way.". But by that time it was already past where I lived. I laughed to myself, thinking about how crazy it would have been if my door suddenly ripped right from its hinges whilst I stood there.

Flesh420 said:

I live in Ohio. I was sitting on my couch watching tv. Wind started to howl outside so I went to my door and just watched. Rain was going two different directions, I've never seen that before. I stood and just watched for about 15 minutes and then I checked my phone to a dozen texts saying "take cover! Tornado is coming your way.". But by that time it was already past where I lived. I laughed to myself, thinking about how crazy it would have been if my door suddenly ripped right from its hinges whilst I stood there.

I forgot to mention that where I live, there was not a tornado warning (but there was a tornado watch and a severe thunderstorm warning). Minutes after the aforementioned severe thunderstorm warning was issued, what sounded just like the tornado siren began to sound off. I am supposed to receive tornado warnings immediately through my cell phone but looked at the warnings map again and there still was not (and never was) a tornado warning in my area. But for my house at least, this was the only real time it got a bit scary. The rest was just the wind. There were quite a few tornado warnings throughout Ohio, but beyond the western quarter of the state, it seems that actual reports of tornadoes touching down diminished quicker than anticipated.