It was August 28th, 1990. A bit of unfortunate Illinois & U.S. history was made. That would be the Plainfield Tornado, a 16-mile path and the only August F-5 tornado in U.S. history. It was my 2nd day of middle school, and I remember I had to make a poster for computer Mac class about a 5" floppy disc. At 3:30pm, I watched the hail fall from the sky (about quarter coin sized) and heard on WGN-AM then-Meteorologist Roger Triemstra on the radio saying "oh there's just a little tornado going on in Plainfield, nothing to worry about".

Well, this was the days before Doppler radar, and there were no warnings put out because it was a rain-wrapped tornado, making it incredibly difficult to spot. It was a very hot and humid day, it was 90 degrees with Dew Points in the 80s (tropical rain-forest type), with a cold front coming & abnormally strong upper level winds. As you can see, the tornado took a southeastern path, which is pretty rare, which happens with about roughly 3% of all tornadoes.




29 people would die, did $165 million in damage, and was a few miles down the road which was just a bit too close for me. A few days later me and my parents went down to Route 30, and I walked in the cornfield where the tornado first hit. What I saw, was some downed corn stalks in about a 60 foot path, and the path kept getting wider and wider and then you saw black dirt, and then completely bare stripped trees. The tornado was never photographed. It still gives me chills.