Tornado Central

Rochelle, Fairdale Tornado Debris Found Up to 80 Miles Away

The sign for Grubsteakers Family Restaurant was found in a farmer's field in Harvard, Illinois roughly 49 miles away.
(Found Items from the Fairdale Illinois Tornado Facebook page)

Photo found 35 miles from Fairdale, Illinois of Mr. and Mrs. Clem Schultz. Geri Schultz lost her life in the Fairdale tornado.
(Found Items from the Fairdale Illinois Tornado Facebook page)

Approximate start/end points and distance traveled of found debris lofted by the Rochelle/Fairdale, Illinois tornado of April 9, 2015.

Last Thursday's killer EF4 tornado, which destroyed homes and businesses in Fairdale and Rochelle, Illinois, lofted debris as far as southeast Wisconsin, up to 80 miles away.

(MORE: Recap | Rare Intensity for North-Central Illinois)

A Facebook page has been started to help reunite photos and other personal items with their owners.

As of late Tuesday morning, the Found Items from the Fairdale Illinois Tornado Facebook page had more than 2,900 likes.

Among the items on the page was the sign from Grubsteakers Family Restaurant north of Rochelle, demolished by the tornado, which was found in a farmer's field in Harvard, Illinois, 49 miles to the northeast.

Weather.com/photos contributor hoppurr sent us photos of a children's book, a piece of twisted sheet metal and a piece of a roofing material, which was found across the street from their property in Harvard, Illinois.

The first found item posted to the Facebook page was a photo taken 25 years ago of Mr. and Mrs. Clem Schultz of Fairdale.

Geraldine Schultz was one of two Fairdale residents killed in the April 9 tornado. The photo was returned to Mr. Schultz.

Even though the tornado had long lifted, debris continued to fall out over parts of southeast Wisconsin.

A photo and another document were recovered in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, about 60 miles northeast of the tornado-ravaged area near Rochelle, Illinois.

WISN-TV chief meteorologist Mark Baden tweeted a photo of a check found by a viewer on the north side of Racine, Wisconsin, some 80 miles away from the area hit by the tornado near Rochelle.

Another family photo, apparently from 1972, was found in Racine.

The long-track EF4 tornado carved a 30 mile-long path in 41 minutes through Ogle, northwest DeKalb and far southern Boone counties.

Large, violent tornadoes have often lofted debris hundreds, if not a few thousand feet into the air.

A landmark study lead by Dr. John Knox, associate professor at the University of Georgia, pored through hundreds of pictures of debris from the April 27, 2011, tornado outbreak, posted on another Facebook page, which has since taken down, to map start and end points of individual pieces of debris.

Knox's team – including Michael Butler, a meteorologist with The Weather Channel – found a photograph from Phil Campbell, Alabama, which was leveled by an EF5 tornado, that turned up in Lenoir City, Tennessee, some 220 miles away.

A total of 44 items were found to have traveled at least 135 miles from their source on April 27, 2011, according to Knox. Not surprisingly, the majority of lofted debris found was from EF4 or EF5 tornadoes that struck that day.

"Tornadoes have been reported to carry an object at least as heavy as 83 tons, as in the case of a railroad car," said Dr. Greg Forbes, severe weather expert. A mattress was once blown 40 miles from Worcester, Massachusetts, into Massachusetts Bay on June 9, 1953.

A man was blown roughly one-quarter mile by a tornado in Fordland, Missouri. on March 12, 2006. Knocked unconscious, he landed in a grass field and is thought to be the farthest blown human being from a tornado that lived to tell about it, according to Forbes.