Tornadoes · United States · Indiana · 1996
F1 tornado, Lafayette to Brookston, Indiana, January 18, 1996
From Lafayette to Brookston, this F1 tornado ran 9.5 miles across White and Hamilton counties on January 18, 1996, touching down at 2:30 PM EST and reaching 50 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
F040 to 72 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
F173 to 112 mphthis tornado
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
F2113 to 157 mph
Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.
F3158 to 206 mph
Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.
F4207 to 260 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
F5261 to 318 mph
Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.
Unrated
The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.
The record
- Rating
- F1
- Date
- January 18, 1996
- Touchdown
- 2:30 PM EST (19:30 UTC)
- Path length
- 9.5 miles (15.3 km)
- Path width
- 50 yards (46 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Counties
- White and Hamilton counties
- Touchdown point
- 40.500, -86.980
- Lift-off point
- 40.520, -86.870
- Record number
- 16
What the Weather Service recorded
A small tornado or gustnado crossed into White County from Tippecanoe County about 3.5 miles south southwest of Brookston and ended just west of Brookston. In White County, there was minor damage to the siding of a house about 2 miles southwest of Brookston. There was also damage to a shed and a swing set overturned. At a nearby farm several buildings were damaged. A large pine tree was snapped. A TV antenna was blown off a house on the southwest side of Brookston. See Tippecanoe County report for information on damage from this tornado in Tippecanoe County.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The air that afternoon
The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.
Lincoln, IL (KILX), 12:00Z
7.5 hours before the tornado, 148 km from the path. January 18, 1996.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -34331 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 679 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 55 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 57 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 622 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 786 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.2 K/km
The surface observations
Lafayette (LAF), 11 km from the path, in the two hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Temp (°F) | Dew point (°F) | Wind | Gust (kt) | Pressure (mb) | Weather |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 1996 tornado in IndianaEvery tornado in Indiana since 1950Warnings in force in Indiana nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of January 18, 1996
12 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 18 | 6:55 AM CST | F0 | Lawrence, AR | 0.5 | 25 | $10,000 | ||
| January 18 | 7:20 AM CST | F1 | St. Francis, AR | 1.0 | 50 | $50,000 | ||
| January 18 | 7:30 AM CST | F1 | Phillips, AR | 2.0 | 25 | 3 | $30,000 | |
| January 18 | 7:40 AM CST | F0 | Poinsett, AR | 2.0 | 50 | $50,000 | ||
| January 18 | 8:05 AM CST | F1 | Pemiscot, MO | 2.0 | 50 | $50,000 | ||
| January 18 | 8:55 AM CST | F0 | Dyer, TN | 0.3 | 25 | $10,000 | ||
| January 18 | 9:05 AM CST | F0 | Marshall, MS | 0.1 | 10 | |||
| January 18 | 9:07 AM CST | F1 | Mississippi, MO | 2.0 | 50 | 1 | $750,000 | |
| January 18 | 10:12 AM CST | F1 | McCracken, KY | 1.0 | 50 | 2 | $70,000 | |
| January 18 | 10:40 AM CST | F0 | Pontotoc, MS | 1.0 | 25 | 1 | $30,000 | |
| January 18 | 3:20 PM CST | F0 | Jackson, MS | 0.1 | 10 | |||
| January 18 | 5:01 PM EST | F0 | Kalamazoo, MI | 0.1 | 10 | $1,000 |
What this means
Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.