With more than four months left in the year, Illinois is close to surpassing the national yearly tornado record.
From Effingham to Mount Vernon, Illinois has seen more than its fair share of destructive storms this year, breaking its annual tornado record by mid-June.
James Auten, lead meteorologist at the Central Illinois National Weather Service office, said Illinois has officially seen 210 tornadoes this year as of Aug. 24.
This exceeds last year's record by more than 60, marking the most annual tornadoes in Illinois since 1950. It's also more than three times the state's current average of 64, according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Chad Merrill.
With more than four months left in the year, this puts the Land of Lincoln in a spot to break the national record.
USA TODAY reported that Illinois accounts for 241 of the 1,360 preliminary tornado reports across the country from Jan. 1 to Aug. 19, 2026.
Texas holds the current record, with either 241 or 245 tornadoes confirmed in 2015, depending on which National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration database is used.
Read more: Do green skies mean a tornado is coming? Busting the most common storm myths
Merrill, who is part of Accuweather's long-range forecast team, told the Journal Star the group previously identified El Niño as a contributing factor to severe storms between northern Texas and the Midwest this summer.
El Niño occurs when Pacific Ocean waters are warmer than average, impacting global weather patterns, according to the NOAA.
Merrill's team also identified a higher concentration of salt closer to the U.S. East Coast, which he said can yield a more active severe weather season in the Midwest in the springtime, producing frequent rounds of thunderstorms.
Merrill said these two indicators point to a higher possibility of areas between Texas and the Midwest seeing severe weather, as well as a possible derecho, which the NOAA defines as a "widespread, long-lived wind storm" typically producing damage along a straight swath in one direction.
Harold Brooks, research scientist at NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory, also pointed to heat and humidity as possibly contributing factors.
Brooks told USA TODAY the jet stream is "one of those really fundamental ingredients that allow storms to rotate," and Illinois has found itself beneath it on several occasions this year.
Though Illinois' tornado season is thought to primarily take place between April and June, the state has historically been hit by tornadoes outside of this range. For example, Illinois was hit by a tornado as late as Oct. 30 in 2024, according to NOAA data collected by the Marion Star.
The NOAA predicts an equal chance of Illinois seeing below, near or above normal precipitation between September and November, with no heavy indications either way.
CONTRIBUTING: Doyle Rice, Dinah Voyles Pulver, Ramon Padilla and Janet Loehrke; USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: How close is Illinois to breaking all-time US tornado record?