Illinois Just Broke the U.S. Tornado Record With Four Months Left. After Katrina, Only 15–20% of Rescued Pets Made It Home.

Illinois has logged 243 preliminary tornado reports in 2026. The previous record for any U.S. state in a full calendar year was 229, set by Texas in 2015 — a mark that had stood since record-keeping began in 1950. Illinois passed it in August, with four months still on the calendar. [1]

Five of them were EF3s. The strongest, the Kankakee–Roselawn tornado on March 10, carried 160 mph winds for 35.6 miles and killed three people. [1]

"The dynamics this year have favored Illinois, with storms staying to the north of Texas and Oklahoma," AccuWeather meteorologist Peyton Simmers told UPI. [1]

And the year isn't done. There's a second severe-weather season in the fall — roughly Halloween through Thanksgiving — that runs across the Deep South and Dixie Alley, southern Illinois included, when the jet stream reactivates and cold Canadian air starts colliding with leftover summer warmth. [2]

Which makes today a reasonable day to look at this, because September 1 is also the start of National Preparedness Month. [3]

The step that fails is the one after the storm

Most pet disaster advice stops at evacuation. The Hurricane Katrina numbers suggest the harder problem comes later.

Before the storm, 259,400 families in New Orleans owned pets. An estimated 104,000 pets were left behind, and at least 88,700 went unaccounted for. Roughly 15,500 animals were ultimately rescued — and only 15% to 20% of them were ever reunited with their owners. [4]

The Louisiana SPCA notes that even that figure beat the national average of about 10%. [4]

The other number from Katrina is the one that changed federal law: 44% of the people who did not evacuate stayed because they would not leave their pets. [4] That finding drove the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act of 2006, which requires state and local emergency plans to account for household pets and service animals to qualify for FEMA funding. [5]

So the law caught up. The reunification math largely hasn't. When a pet gets loose during a storm — a blown-open door, a fence down, a dog that bolts at the sound — the animal usually survives. What breaks is the chain connecting it back to you.

What actually closes that gap

Photographs of you with the animal. Not just a cute photo of the cat. A picture with you in the frame is what functions as proof of ownership at an intake desk, and it's what turns a "found dog" post into a resolved one. Keep them in the cloud, not only on the phone that may not survive the week.

Contact details that still work. Phone numbers change, people move, and a chip or a tag pointing at a disconnected line is the single most common reason a found pet stays found instead of getting home. It takes about five minutes to check that the number on the tag and the number on the chip registration are both current, and there's no better week to do it.

A carrier per animal, staged where you'll grab it. Not in the attic. Cats especially — a cat that has never been in a carrier will not be in a carrier when the sirens go off.

Two weeks of medication and a copy of vaccination records. Boarding facilities and emergency shelters generally ask for proof of vaccination, and "it's at the vet's office" is not an answer that gets you through the door on a Sunday.

Know which shelters take pets. Most pet owners don't, and the PETS Act obligates planning, not any particular shelter's door policy. Look it up for your county now, when it's a search rather than a phone tree.

Plan for not being home. Storms don't wait for you to get off work. A neighbor with a key, who knows where the carriers and leashes are, is the whole plan in that scenario.

If you're in tornado country

The sheltering advice itself is different for dogs and cats, and it's worth reading before you need it — we've written it up for dogs and for cats.

The short version for a warning: pets come with you to the interior room, on leash or in a carrier, before the sirens rather than during. A cat given ten minutes' notice goes under the bed, and the bed is not where you want to be arguing with a cat.

One evening's work

The Illinois record is a genuinely unusual year, and it may say nothing about what happens where you live. But the fall season is ahead of us, the Gulf is warm, and the preparation is the same regardless of which hazard shows up: photos, working phone numbers, carriers you can reach, records you can produce.

It's an evening's work, and it's the difference between the 15% and the rest.

Sources

1. Illinois sets U.S. state record for most tornadoes in a year — UPI
2. As fall dominates US, 2nd tornado season of the year set to begin — News 6 / ClickOrlando
3. National Preparedness Month — Ready.gov
4. Hurricane Katrina Animal Rescue Facts — Louisiana SPCA
5. The PETS Act: Companion Animals Affected by Natural Disasters — Animal Legal Defense Fund