Central Illinois Still Hasn't Had A Severe T-Storm Watch in 2025, But It Gets Weirder

I shared a post last month noting the weird anomaly, or void in severe thunderstorm watches across central Illinois in 2025. That streak has of course continued up until today. Literally, portions of central Illinois are still waiting on their first severe thunderstorm watch of the year as we enter the last week of October. I'd have to do some digging to see if that's even happened before.

It might be easy to say "yep, drought over there, makes sense", but it's not as if it was or has been completely quiet across that part of the country.

Zero severe thunderstorm watches have been issued in 2025 inside the white void over central Illinois.

Actually, what makes this void in severe t-storm watches more interesting to me is the fact that Illinois has actually led the U.S. for much of 2025 in total tornadoes and tornado watches! A lot of this activity was front-loaded in a very active March - April - May with a lack of rainfall/storm activity for much of June, July, August.

There have been many tornado watches issued across this same corridor of central Illinois in 2025, however!

Illinois (and Texas) flips between #1 and #2 for total tornadoes in 2025 based on preliminary/confirmed numbers.

Climatologically speaking you're probably going to be packing more 'tornado watches' into rain/storm days in MAM than you are in JJA so that passes the eye test. It's just SO WEIRD to make it through a busy tornado season, and then even a quiet summer severe weather season in the Midwest without one single severe thunderstorm watch having been issued.

Apparently severe weather days in central Illinois has been "tornado or nothing" in 2025.