Small Illinois town rocked by fake weather reports

This may have been a prank, but individuals and organizations with more nefarious schemes may use this as a way to wreak havoc and sow anxiety. The Chicago Sun-Times’s Mitch Dudek reports that tornado sirens blared and people headed to their basements in a small central Illinois town six weeks ago because someone submitted a phony weather report to the National Weather Service. The same person apparently has struck a number of times since April, e-mailing bogus claims of adverse weather in the Chicago area and elsewhere in the Midwest. The FBI has become involved because knowingly submitting false statements to the government-run weather service is a federal crime.

One false report claimed a tornado had touched down in Crete, a far-south Chicago suburb, but it was quickly ruled a hoax. Far-south suburban Minooka also was targeted by the e-mailer, but most of the e-mail reports were aimed at smaller, more remote communities in Illinois and Wisconsin. The reports appeared genuine at first because many were in areas close to where severe weather was actually occurring.

Authorities caught on after a 25 April e-mail claimed a tornado had hit Downstate Blue Mound — about 200 miles southwest of Chicago — and caused injury and damage. The e-mail was one of several factors that led the weather service to issue a tornado warning for the region, spurring a local television station to interrupt broadcasting. The Blue Mound Fire Department also sprang into action. “We deployed storm spotters looking for funnel clouds as people took cover,” said Fire Chief John Holmgren.

After the tornado report proved false, employees at the weather service realized they had been getting bogus reports and flagged the electronic fingerprint of the computer sending the e-mails. “We’ve alerted people unnecessarily and frightened them,” Schwein said. “This person has really misled us.”

The service has received dozens of e-mails from the faker. The last one was 2 June. “No severe weather warning has been issued solely on the false reports, but eyewitness reports can influence meteorologist forecasts,” said Tom Schwein, a high-ranking weather service official. “If this becomes the trend … we might have to stop accepting reports on our Web site.”