Thunderstorm Wind in Washington County, Indiana

A tree was downed along North Mill Street in Pekin.

During the afternoon and early evening hours on May 16th, a Mesoscale Convective Vortex moved from west-southwest to east-northeast across the lower Ohio Valley, providing forcing for scattered showers and thunderstorms to develop. Thunderstorms were able to feed off of a seasonably high amount of instability, with around 2000 J/kg Mixed-Layer CAPE present in the pre-storm environment. While synoptic scale ridging over the southeast US meant that large scale flow was fairly weak, the MCV provided a mesoscale enhancement to the wind shear profile, with around 30-35 knots of effective shear supporting organized multicell clusters. Scattered strong to severe storms moved across southern Indiana, producing several reports of quarter sized hail and downed trees.