Two killed and several injured as tornado rips through southern Illinois

Authorities in Illinois say that two older residents were killed and at least five other people were injured in a tornado that ripped through a rural county and destroyed several buildings on Sunday evening.

The fatalities occurred in Mount Vernon, sheriff Jeff Bullard of Jefferson county said on Monday. He identified the victims as Sarita Kimble, 62, and Delores Shelton, 83, who were inside separate structures leveled by the tornado.

A photograph posted on social media showed damage in Mount Vernon after the storm passed through, and a video showed a funnel cloud spinning over the city.

The sheriff’s office said in a post on Facebook that the tornado touched down at about 5pm on Sunday, and destroyed at least three mobile homes. None of the five people who were hurt sustained life-threatening injuries, the agency said.

Sunday’s fatalities in Illinois followed the death early on Saturday of a man in Sedgwick, Kansas.

According to the National Weather Service (NWS) and local news oulet KWCH, 64-year-old Ricky Schale, a father of five, lost his life when his family’s mobile home was torn from its anchor and blown apart.

AccuWeather reported that 117 tornado warnings were issued by the NWS, and 40 tornado reports were filed with the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) on Sunday afternoon and evening, mostly between Peoria, Illinois, and Jasper, Indiana.

The weather forecaster said that Illinois had already seen more tornado reports in 2026 – a total of 164 up to and including last Thursday – than any other year since records began.

Potent tornadoes are one form of extreme weather that have become more common amid the ongoing climate crisis, which has been driven in large part by human emission of greenhouse gases.

Updated data published on Monday from the SPC, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that 1,031 tornadoes have been reported nationwide in 2026, with 40 of them highly destructive EF2 severity or greater.

“The dynamics this year have favored Illinois, with storms staying to the north of Texas and Oklahoma,” Peyton Simmers, an AccuWeather meteorologist, said.

“Additionally, the drought in the western US sent a lot of warm air aloft across Texas and Oklahoma, which has helped to limit the overall severe weather across the south.”