IL

Storm restoration across Wabash County

Wabash County sits in the Wabash Valley on the Illinois-Indiana border, a corridor that channels severe weather from the Gulf and Great Plains. The county is exposed to tornadoes, large hail, and damaging straight-line winds from derechos - a June 1990 F4 tornado tracked through the Aden-Albion-Mount Carmel corridor, and derechos crossing southeast Illinois regularly produce winds exceeding 80 mph. The Wabash River is a chronic flood threat: the March 1913 flood broke all local levees and ran 8 miles wide at Mount Carmel with a record discharge of 428,000 cubic feet per second, and a 2011 flood set a new gauge record of 34.02 feet. Winter storms are a regular hazard, with NWS Paducah-area events delivering 9-11 inches of snow across Wabash and neighboring counties and ice storms causing widespread power outages, as in January 2025 when over 100,000 residents lost power across the region.