Brianna DeWert

Tornadoes and other severe weather filled midwestern calendars for February of 2024.

This past February, Illinois and the surrounding midwest area has been bombarded by severe weather and tornadoes, marking the fourth time in recorded Chicago history to see tornadoes in February. On the 27th alone, a total of 11 tornadoes touched down in Illinois during the hottest February on record. 

That same night, North students attending a vocal jazz concert were corralled into hallways following phone alerts and weather sirens, the concert delayed nearly an hour before starting.

“We were all ready for the audience to come in and sing our songs, we’d been practicing for so long,” said Dana Kave, freshman. “We all went into the music hallway and it was very chaotic; in the moment I was just thinking about the people I could see and who I was surrounded with.” 

After the lockdown, the show played out as normal and the school was not damaged. 

With wind gusts reaching nearly 110 miles per hour and affecting mainly the Sugar Grove, Batavia, Geneva, Inverness and Mundelein areas, the storms caused power outages, traffic delays and damages all across the state. They resulted from the shockingly warm temperatures of the month, with Rockford breaking the record for the hottest Illinois February at a peak of 78 degrees on the day of the storms.

Causing the storms themselves, a cold front followed the heat and dropped Chicago and Rockford 54 and 60 degrees respectively on the night of the 27th. Outside of Illinois, another dozen tornadoes were confirmed or suspected, shocking the midwest with hail and high-speed winds. 

With regular storms but high winds this March, temperatures have remained within the average for Chicago, at high thirties and low forties. There are no predicted unusual storm outbreaks within the coming months.