EF1 Tornado — Howard, Indiana

2023-03-31 · near Hemlock, Howard, Indiana

Event narrative

This was the third tornado (and only EF1) to impact Howard County. The tornado began in a rural field south of a homestead with two barns, home, and mobile home. One small barn was completely destroyed along with the mobile home which caused a serious injury. The home and larger barn had lesser damage. This tornado continued to the northeast, damaging the trees, homes and barns of several homesteads, with maximum winds of 110 mph. The tornado continued into a larger neighborhood near US Highway 35 where it caused mainly roof and tree damage to tree rows.

Wider weather episode

A strong, occluding storm system over the Upper Midwest produced a deep column of strong southwesterly winds over the Midwest on the afternoon and evening of the 31st.

This pattern generated an inordinate amount of vertical wind shear. The overall southwesterly flow also brought rather mild and somewhat humid air into the region, which was adequately unstable given noticeably colder air aloft, especially over the southwestern quadrant of Indiana.

Resulting thunderstorms were able to mix down the stronger winds to the surface as damaging straight line gusts, while a rather low freezing level promoted isolated large hail. Ten tornadoes occurred across the region: 5 from a rotating supercell thunderstorm that tracked roughly parallel to and about 20 miles south of Interstate 70, and 5 others spawned from a squall line's northern book-end vortex that impacted north-central central Indiana. The supercell's first two tornadoes (both EF3) caused a combined 5 fatalities...before the supercell spawned two more strong tornadoes (EF2/EF3), with the cell's final EF3 inflicting major damage on a warehouse in Whiteland (Johnson Co.). The (northern) squall line's first tornado was an EF2 that impacted mostly rural areas...while the squall line's four following tornadoes were all weak (EF0/EF1), with the final three spawned over Howard County, concluding with a longer tracking EF1 that injured one person.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (40.4207, -86.0199)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1089568. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.