EF0 Tornado — Crawford, Indiana

2024-05-07 · near Sulphur Spgs, Crawford, Indiana

Event narrative

The National Weather Service in Louisville, in coordination with Crawford County Indiana Emergency Management, concluded that a brief EF0 tornado touched down a tenth of a mile southwest of Sulphur Springs on the evening of May 7, 2024. The tornado touched down near the Stinking Fork just south of Sulphur Springs where it uprooted some hardwoods and scattered them in differing directions. The tornado then traveled east northeast where it destroyed the lean-to of a small barn, scattering debris

downwind. The tornado then widened to approximately 80 yards where it threw a carport about 75 yards to the northeast onto South Old Union Church Road. From here, the tornado maintained intensity with estimated 75 to 80 mph winds where a few trees were uprooted and downed in differing directions, mostly to the north of the

easterly storm motion. One healthy hardwood was even downed back

to a northwest direction, providing strong evidence of the cyclonic rotation. The tornado ended after it downed one more hardwood about 0.2 miles east southeast of Sulphur Springs just before South Old Union Church Road.

Wider weather episode

During the evening and early overnight hours on May 7th and 8th, a cold front moved eastward from the mid Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley. Ample instability was present in the warm sector ahead of the front, though poor mid-level lapse rates initially hindered storm development across the region. Just before sunset, a few discrete cells began to develop along the Ohio River in southern Indiana, quickly gaining supercell characteristics in the presence of strong deep-layer shear. While weak mid-level lapse rates prevented explosive growth of these cells, they were strong enough to produce two weak tornadoes in southern Indiana. The tornadic cells also produced minor straight-line wind damage after the tornado lifted. Sporadic straight-line wind damage was also observed with another wave of storms later during the early morning hours of May 8th.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (38.2090, -86.4863)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1187013. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.