EF0 Tornado — Floyd, Indiana

2023-05-07 · near Georgetown, Floyd, Indiana

Event narrative

The tornado first touched down on the northwest portion of the Brookside subdivision (near the eastern portion of Georgetown Lake), with a couple larger branches of two older compromised trees twisted off. The Brookside subdivision is located just south of Indiana Route 64 and just east of Baylor Wissman Rd. There were over a dozen homes sustaining shingle, soffit, gutter, and fascia damage with many tarps on roofs. Shingles were thrown from an east northeasterly direction to a east southeasterly direction. There was little if any tree damage inside the subdivision, with one playground lifted and thrown into a fence. Drone photography showed the vast majority of the damage was to shingles and to soffits. The damage was estimated to be EF0 with 80 mph winds. The last damage point was in a wooded area just east of Zachary Trail before interstate 64. One tree was topped in that grove of trees.

Wider weather episode

During the early morning hours of May 7th, a cluster of strong and occasionally severe thunderstorms over central Illinois gradually grew upscale into a bowing line of storms as it moved southeast into central and southern Indiana toward dawn. Ahead of the developing quasi-linear convective system, a moderately unstable environment was present across southern Indiana, with MLCAPE ranging from around 500 J/kg in the east to around 1500 J/kg in the west. The line of thunderstorms generally produced sub-severe wind gusts across southern Indiana, as the strongest winds remained aloft thanks to a residual nocturnal stable layer. However, as storms approached the Ohio River, a few discrete cells moving from west to east were overtaken by the line which was moving from north-northwest to south-southeast. In the fifteen minutes or so after these cell mergers took place, five brief spin-up tornadoes occurred in Floyd County, producing pockets of structural and tree damage across the county. All of the tornadoes produced either EF0 or EF1 damage, with estimated wind speeds generally between 75 and 105 mph. Minor straight-line wind damage was also observed as this line of storms moved through. The severe threat ended by 10 a.m. as storms pushed southward into central Kentucky.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (38.2919, -85.9541)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1103149. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.