Severe thunderstorm and even tornado outbreaks can happen in December, even as most thoughts are about snow and cold.
On Dec. 18, 1957, 68 years ago today, an outbreak of strong tornadoes tore through southern Illinois and eastern Missouri.
Sunfield, Illinois, about 65 miles southeast of St. Louis, was wiped out by one of the 25 tornadoes. It was later rated F5 after the Fujita scale was implemented in 1971. Incredibly, only one person was killed in this tornado, a man who remained out in the open, according to thestorm report.
While there are caveats to rating tornadoes by their damage, these F/EF5 tornadoes are rare, particularly in December. Of the 60 such tornadoes since 1950 to achieve that rating, only the 1957 Sunfield, Illinois, tornado and a 1953 Vicksburg, Mississippi, tornado did so in December.
But there were four other deadly tornadoes in that outbreak.
Two of the tornadoes which struck Mt. Vernon, Gorham and Murphysboro, Illinois, were rated F4. The Gorham and Murphysboro tornado alone claimed 11 lives and injured 200. Its forward speed of 60 mph likely contributed to the death and injury toll.
Most of Gorham and much of Murphysboro had been destroyed just 32 years earlier by the 1925 Tri-State Tornado, the deadliest and longest-tracked tornado in U.S. history.
The 21 twisters spawned remained Illinois' largest December tornado outbreak until aDec. 1, 2018, outbreaktopped that.
If that wasn't enough, another dozen tornadoes tore through parts of the South the next day, including an F4 which claimed two lives in southern Arkansas.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him onBluesky,X (formerly Twitter)andFacebook.
