Thunderstorm Wind — Crawford, Indiana

2024-04-02 · near Tower, Crawford, Indiana

Event narrative

On Wednesday April 3rd at approximately 1:20 PM EDT, the National Weather Service in Louisville conducted a damage assessment survey in Carefree, Indiana for damage caused by an afternoon storm on Tuesday.

Wind damage was observed at the firehouse east of State Road 66. Metal siding between the top of a block wall and the roof was blown in near the fascia. The bottom of the metal siding remained attached to the building above the block wall. Once the wind was able to enter the structure, the northern half of the roof was completely blown off the building. Some of the roof struck the newly installed outdoor warning siren which sits next to the north side of the building. Pieces of roofing and insulation blew up to 170 yards to the east-southeast before coming to rest on a tree and fence. Within this 170 yards, a trail of debris remained on the ground, in trees, and against trailers and a building on private property along the northern extent of the debris field.

After reviewing radar data, survey points, and detailed drone images from the Milltown Police Department, it's determined that a collapsing storm core produced the approximate 90 mph wind that caused the damage to the firehouse.

Wider weather episode

As a surface low cut across Missouri and Illinois, its eastward stretching warm front moved north across central Indiana while its cold front moved east towards the Lower Ohio Valley. This placed southern Indiana in the warm sector, where 3 separate lines of convection moved through during the day. The first line of storms generating from an early morning outflow boundary dropped southeast through the area. This produced some isolated wind damage which caused one person to get injured in Dubois County. The second line, moving west to east, ripped the roof off a fire house in Crawford County before producing a tornado near Georgetown. The third line, just ahead of the cold front, moved through during the evening hours. This line knocked trees down in Crawford County before producing a tornado along Interstate 265 in Clark County that crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky. A total of ten injuries were reported from the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (38.2378, -86.3611)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1175957. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.