On Sunday, November 17th, Washington, Illinois faced a devastating tornado that killed 6 people across the state and flattening much of the city of 15,000 people.
Bits of American flags and insulation from destroyed homes clung to trees that had been stripped of most of their branches and remaining leaves by the Washington twister. Spawned by a fast-moving storm system, the tornado had winds of up to 200 miles per hour.
The storm destroyed 250 to 500 houses in that city. Authorities were keeping evacuated residents away out of concern that the remaining structures were dangerously unstable.
The storm produced about 80 tornadoes, according to the National Weather Service. The tornadoes leveled scores of homes and demolished entire neighborhoods. The National Weather Service confirmed preliminary EF-4 tornado damage in Washington County in southern Illinois, with winds of
The storm knocked down power lines across the Midwest, and power companies reported that some 800,000 homes and businesses were without electricity on Monday morning. Michigan had the largest number of outages, with Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, West Virginia and Pennsylvania also feeling the storm’s aftermath.
In neighboring Kentucky, the storm system damaged several homes in the western part of the state, ripping shingles and gutters from roofs, scattering tree limbs and downing power lines.
