No tornados reported in Will County on Monday

No tornadoes were reported following the National Weather Service’s warning late Monday for part of southwestern Will County.

The tornado warning was issued starting around 9:30 p.m. on Monday for the area around Braidwood and Wilmington, according to meteorologist Eric Lenning of the NWS Chicago office.

“We don’t have any knowledge a tornado occurred in that area,” Lenning said Tuesday, though he said the NWS was still looking for information.

Lenning said the NWS issued the warning when it detected rotation in the storm system in that area, though it doesn’t appear the rotation developed into a tornado. He said the NWS typically tries to issue a warning before an actual tornado touches down.

Much of northern Illinois was under a tornado watch on Monday and several tornado touchdowns have now been confirmed in DeKalb County, one each in neighboring Kane, Lee and McHenry counties, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service said Tuesday.

“At the moment without our areas of jurisdiction we confirmed six tornadoes,” said Romeoville-headquartered National Weather Service meteorologist Rafal Ogorek.

According to the National Weather Service, four of those were in DeKalb County, and one was in Kane County, with a sixth one in McHenry County, and a seventh was in Lee County. Of those seven tornadoes, three were categorized as EF-1, the second-lowest damaging twister according to the weather service scale.

National Weather Service survey teams were assessing damage on the ground to determine categories of the twisters, which aren’t yet known. An update from the National Weather Service shortly after 6 p.m. Tuesday confirmed a seventh tornado in Paw Paw, in Lee County.

Ogorek said the first confirmed tornado was near Esmond, an EF-0, in the far northwest of DeKalb County, and it’s possible that one also touched down in Ogle County.

“We have a survey team there, but there was definitely a tornado there,” Ogorek said.

The second touched down south of Kirkland, an EF-U which means there wasn’t enough damage to survey it by a number on the scale, according to the National Weather Service. That tornado came from the same storm system as the first one, he said.

The third tornado, an EF-0, also touched down in DeKalb County and near Ogle County, somewhere between Creston and Esmond, and tracked into DeKalb County just north of Malta, Ogorek said.

The fourth tornado, an EF-1, occurred fewer than 12 miles northwest into Kane County, in the Burlington area, he said. The fifth tornado, an EF-1, touched down in Sycamore, where on Monday night the National Weather Service said the heaviest damage was reported.

“That one started in DeKalb County,” Ogorek said. “We’re not entirely sure how long it was on the ground for, but it’s possible it stayed on the ground for a good distance and tracked into Kane County.”

The Tuesday night update from the National Weather Service reported that the Sycamore tornado track could have split into two or three separate tracks, and teams are still working to piece together the details of where, when and how often the initial tornado lifted.

Ogorek said it’s also possible there were additional touchdowns in Kane County but they’re not yet confirmed.

A confirmed EF-1 tornado also touched down in the north part of the City of McHenry in McHenry County.

He said heavy late summer storms Monday night made for weather patterns which are favorable for tornadic activity.

“The environment overall across northern Illinois was favorable for the development of tornadoes,” Ogorek said. “Oftentimes, tornadoes like to form on boundaries, and what we’re thinking is that there was probably some sort of boundary known as an outflow boundary that left behind storms earlier in the day and it’s possible that that might have been laid out right across DeKalb County.”