1975 Canton, Illinois, tornado

[2][3] Widespread significantly severe damaging wind occurred in many areas across eastern Iowa and the northwestern third of Illinois.

[4] A wind gust of 85 miles per hour (137 km/h) was measured near Peoria and a funnel cloud was spotted at Groveland.

One woman was killed when venturing outside to close her car windows and a six-story International Harvester warehouse was ignited into a large fire in Canton, Illinois.

On several farms, broad convergent and cyclonic crop damage exhibited evidence of the parent tornadocyclone.

[3] The first tornado of a complex combination of tornado family and extreme downbursts touched down at 4:30 p.m. about 14 miles (23 km) west of the small city of Canton (or 3 miles (4.8 km) southwest of Blyton) and immediately grew to very large size in agrarian central Fulton County.

The National Guard was deployed, and the damage was so immense and overwhelming that the city was declared a federal disaster area.

[3][5] Total tornado area was 37.5 sq mi (97 km2) with a very high destruction potential index (DPI) – integrating intensity, path length, and width[8]—value of 150.

Downbursts, a recent concept by Fujita at the time (the 1974 Super Outbreak the year before was also significant in their conceptual development), covered a very large area; these as well as a continuous series of smaller but very intense microbursts were responsible for the meandering course of the tornadoes (although the average of the path was linear) and for some changes in intensity.

Conversely, another microburst seems to have caused the tornado to intensify on the eastern side of Canton and coincided with the two deaths.