EF1 Tornado — Orange, Indiana

2023-08-06 · near Paoli, Orange, Indiana

Event narrative

The first damage point had a few topped and twisted trees near Red Bud Lane and Hospital Rd. Wind speeds were between 75 and 80 mph with a 50 yard width. There was sporadic tree damage along a creek, and tree damage became more concentrated along Apache and Slaten Drive with trees twisted, topped, and one uprooted tree. Wind speeds increased to 85 to 90 mph with a width of 75 yards. The width increased to 100 yards along Sandy Hook Road and Paul Street with wind speeds around 90 mph. There were several trees on homes, and increased twisting of the trees with damage going from the east southeast to the north northeast. There were numerous power poles and powerlines down between Indiana 37 and Paul Street.

The peak of the tornado damage was on the east side of Indiana 37 between Locust Street and Oak Street. Several warehouses had significant roof damage with debris thrown from east southeast to north northeast. There were several cars that had debris on the west and east side of them. The debris from the warehouse was thrown into a forested area up to 200 yards in distance. Wind speed in this area were 100 mph with a width of 110 yards. The NWS drone was key to the survey, with drone imagery capturing trees snapped, topped, and uprooted several hundred yards east of the last warehouse. There was a lot of straight line wind damage between the two different tornadoes in Paoli.

Wider weather episode

Several individual storms moved across Missouri and Illinois before combining into a line of convection as it moved across southern Indiana. The line interacted with the low level jet to produce 6 tornadoes across 4 Indiana counties, including a long track tornado that traveled 25.89 miles through Dubois and Orange Counties. This set the record for the longest known tornado track for the month of August within the NWS Louisville County Warning Area. Other parts of the line surged and caused tree and power line damage along and north of Interstate 64 across southern Indiana and into the greater Louisville, Kentucky area. Additional wind and hail reports were received from the Bluegrass region of Kentucky.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (38.5636, -86.4807)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1119015. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.