EF2 Tornado — Washington, Indiana

2025-04-02 · near Shorts Corner, Washington, Indiana

Event narrative

An EF2 tornado, with peak winds of 115 mph, tracked across a little over a 15-mile stretch of southern and eastern Washington County late Wednesday night. It likely dissipated over the heavily forested area along the Washington/Scott county border.

It was on the ground for 13 minutes and had a peak width of 600 yards.

The worst damage was near Conway Community Church near South Boston. The church had significant roof damage, with many gravestones in the adjacent cemetery knocked over. Just west of this location and next to the water tower, a single wide mobile

home was rolled about 75 yards north and completely destroyed. A chest freezer was picked up from here and thrown 100 yards northeast into the cemetery. A conservative estimate of the wind speed here is 115 mph.

Additional widespread damage occurred along New Salem Road. north of State Road 160 where a swath of trees fell. Another mobile home was rolled upside down, likely in the inflow to this tornado. Just north of that location a barn roof was crumpled and another barn was destroyed. This area likely saw high end EF1 winds. The tornado continued northeast to the end of Calloway Road. where some structures were damaged but a very clear path of trees were snapped.

The tornado was widest at both of these hard-hit locations. Otherwise it caused minor structural damage to several homes as well as snapping and uprooting many trees along the path. It started near the Big Spring Nature Preserve, where some roof

damage occurred to a barn and a tree fell along the road. It ended in the woods northeast of the eastern end of Calloway Road, or somewhere near the Washington/Scott County border.. The survey found some sporadic straight lined wind damage along the storm's path into Scott County south of Scottsburg.

Wider weather episode

On the night of April 2nd, 2025, a cold front approached the lower Ohio Valley. Along and ahead of the cold front, numerous supercells developed over southern Illinois and western Kentucky. These storms tracked eastward and occasionally grew upscale into a QLCS with bowing segments. Storms lasted all night and into the morning hours, as the cold front began to stall over the lower Ohio Valley. These storms left behind a wake of damage in many counties in southern Indiana. Over the next few days, waves of showers and storms rode along the cold front bringing lots of rain which lead to flash and areal flooding. Showers and storms came through daily, until the evening of April 6th. Overall, 2 tornadoes touched down in south central Indiana from late evening into the overnight on April 2nd and 3rd, including one EF-2 and one EF-1.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (38.4893, -86.1130)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1259404. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.