IL

Storm restoration across Knox County

Knox County sits in the heart of central Illinois, placing it squarely in a high-frequency corridor for tornadoes, large hail, and straight-line wind events. The county has recorded 33 confirmed tornadoes since 1950, including an F3 in 1974 that destroyed roughly 200 homes near Abingdon, and a July 2024 derecho that drove 80-95 mph straight-line winds across the county and embedded an EF-1 tornado west of Elmore. Hailstorms producing golf-ball to baseball-sized stones accompany many of the spring and early-summer supercell systems that track northeast through the Spoon River valley and across the Galesburg plain. Winter brings significant ice storm risk: Knox County lies within the primary national belt for severe freezing rain, and events like the historic March 1978 ice storm - which deposited up to two inches of glaze across a 90-mile swath of central Illinois - have left the county without power for days at a time, with heavy snowfall and blizzard conditions adding additional roof-load and structural stress each season.