If you think Illinois has had a busy year for severe weather, you’re not alone — State Climatologist Trent Ford is right there with you.
Ford said 2026 has been one of, if not the, busiest years on record for severe weather in Illinois. He said that the five National Weather Service bureaus covering the state have issued more than 1,300 thunderstorm and tornado warnings as of August.
Within the past week alone, severe storms left Bloomington-Normal flooded and knocked out power for thousands of Springfield residents.
That’s in addition to the 203 tornadoes confirmed to have touched down in the state this year — the most in Illinois history and over triple the annual average of 66 tornadoes, according to The Weather Channel.
Ford said the whole of the Midwest had been hit with what he called the “ingredients of instability,” or heat and humidity, this year. By chance, those ingredients had coalesced into storms mostly over Illinois, he said.
“While the Midwest in general has been a very active severe weather year, Illinois’ year is record-breaking because that’s where a lot of those ingredients have been mixing really effectively to make for some really intense thunderstorms,” Ford said.
“What we can say is that an uptick in severe weather activity is consistent with the response that we would expect with climate change and our models are projecting into the future.” — Trent Ford, Illinois State Climatologist
The role of climate change in this was hard to determine, Ford said. There aren’t many “strong, clear connections” between it and severe weather, he said, unlike climate change and things like drought, heat waves or heavy rainfall. However, climate change can make the conditions for severe weather more common and extremes more extreme, he said.
“While I can’t say, ‘Hey, this year, it’s absolutely climate change,’ like I would be able to with an extreme heat event, for example, or a heavy rainfall event,” he said, “what we can say is that an uptick in severe weather activity is consistent with the response that we would expect with climate change and our models are projecting into the future.”
Smart municipal planning and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions can help curb the effects of severe weather in the future, Ford said. But severe weather can still produce debilitating anxiety in certain people — a “natural human reaction,” Ford said.
He recommended putting some of that energy into preparing for severe weather, such as putting together a “go bag” emergency kit or putting together a plan for where to go if a tornado hits.
“It’s perfectly normal and reasonable to be anxious about severe weather, but there’s a lot we can do to protect ourselves from severe weather, too,” Ford said.
