EF2 tornado in Monroe County, Indiana

An EF-2 tornado tracked 3.73 miles through west-central Monroe County, across the Bloomington Airport up to the Interstate Route 69 interchange with Indiana Route 48. The maximum path width was 440 yards with the tornado causing significant damage to neighborhoods, apartments, businesses, and portions of the airport. Extensive tree damage also occurred.

The tornado first developed in wooded areas west of the airport before rapidly intensifying as it moved into a small neighborhood just west of the airport. This area experienced the event's most intense winds, extensive tree damage along with multiple points of structural damage to homes. As the tornado progressed eastward, it caused damage to an airplane hangar. While passing over the airfield, the KBMG ASOS recorded a wind gust of 70 mph. The tornado continued east-northeast, damaging numerous homes before striking a newly constructed neighborhood where additional high-end EF-1 to low-end EF-2 damage occurred. Additional EF-1 damage was observed further northeast at an apartment complex. After producing damage to a bank overhang and causing roofing damage to several warehouse structures, the tornado dissipated near the east end of this business district, immediately west of I-69. Peak wind speeds were estimated at 120 mph.

A strengthening storm system lifted through the Middle Mississippi Valley on the 19th, dragging its warm frontal zone northward through the Midwest, and bringing near-record high temperatures and anomalous dewpoints into central Indiana. Multiple rounds of severe weather occurred over the region, from early morning large hail in two far-northern zones, covering roads in Warren County, to more organized evening severe weather from rotating supercell thunderstorms. Through the evening of the 19th, the destabilized atmosphere combined with a stregthening low-level jet stream that progressed eastward into the region, boosting 0-1 km wind shear as high as 300 m2/s2. A resultant cluster of discrete late-day to evening supercells were focused along the frontal zone, near or south of the Interstate 70 corridor, and produced scattered large hail over 6 counties and isolated wind damage to trees and/or power poles in 4 counties.

A stronger supercell with a history of producing two weak tornadoes in Crawford County, Illinois, continued into central Indiana, spawning an EF-0 tornado in Sullivan County, an intense EF-2 just west of Bloomington that caused extensive structural damage to homes, apartments, and airport facilities, and a brief EF-U in Decatur County; this cell also produced ping-pong ball (1.50-inch diameter) sized hail in Greene and Monroe Counties.