Lightning in Hamilton County, Indiana

Newspaper and broadcast media reported a lightning strike was the suspected cause of a fire of a shopping strip in western Carmel, Indiana. Firefighters think lightning struck the El Rodeo restaurant, located in the 12-unit Weston Shoppes, and quickly spread across the shopping center. The strip mall owner said continuing lightning strikes prevented firefighters from hosing the flames from their ladder trucks, hampering their efforts to save the building. Damage estimates, not including each store's inventory, could be between 3 and 4 million dollars. Firefighters were still on the scene 8 1/2 hours later.

During the afternoon and evening hours on June 21st a combination of old thunderstorm activity that moved in from upstream of Indiana, along with new development behind the previous activity occurred as a result of upper level atmospheric support and ample surface heating. This led to a very to extremely unstable air mass...with MLCAPES exceeding 3500 j/kg.

By early evening discrete cells developed along a west to east oriented boundary that extended roughly from near the Missouri/Iowa border eastward through central Illinois and then to just north of Lafayette, Indiana. Radar data showed several of these storm cells having supercellular structure/rotation as they encountered enhanced low level helicity (most simply put, helicity is the amount of spin to a parcel of air) along the boundary. Upstream wind profile data at Davenport, Iowa showed favorable veering of wind with height for storm rotation. Upper air data from the 00z (7 PM EST) sounding from the Central Illinois National Weather Service office showed a low lifted condensation level of 3000 ft and steep low level lapse rates, which lent support to the storms. Storms forming upstream of Indiana moved into the state as the day progressed.