F2 tornado, Ripley to Monterey, Indiana, June 11, 1998

1. F040 to 72 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. F173 to 112 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. F2113 to 157 mphthis tornado

   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.

4. 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.

5. F4207 to 260 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. 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.

7. 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.

Rating

F2

Date

June 11, 1998

Touchdown

6:28 PM EST (23:28 UTC)

Path length

9.0 miles (14.5 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

1

Property damage

$1.0 million

County

Pulaski County

Touchdown point

41.100, -86.670

Lift-off point

41.150, -86.500

Record number

996

Synoptic and mesoscale conditions for June 11, 1998...Morning sfc and upper air analysis revealed a potent upper short wave trough across North Dakota with an intensifying area of sfc low pressure across southwest Kansas. An unseasonably strong 140 knot jet streak was ejecting out of this trough across Kansas with the left front exit region progged into central Indiana after 18Z. Increasing moisture convergence and theta-e advection along the northward lifting warmfront was seen as 850 mb winds were forecast to increase to 55 knots. By 21Z, the sfc low had moved into eastern Iowa and deepened to 994 mb. The prestorm enviornment was characterized by moderate to extreme instability (LI values -7 to -9 and CAPE values in excess of 2000 J/kg) with temperatures in the lower 80s and dewpoints in the low/mid 70s. This combined with a dry punch at 700mb and deep layer shear along the warm front, where storm relative helicity values increased to 400 M2/S2, lay the foundation for an outbreak of damaging tornadoes across Indiana.

4 TRAILER HOMES DESTROYED, SEVERAL OTHERS SUFFERED MINOR TO MAJOR DAMAGE, ONE HOME AND BARN DESTROYED, SEVERAL OTHER HOMES SUFFERED MODERATE DAMAGE. TORNADO STARTED IN RIPLEY AND TRACKED EAST NORTHEAST TO MONTEREY BEFORE IT LIFTED. EXTENSIVE TREE DAMAGE OCCURRED ALONG THE TORNADOES PATH.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

40 minutes of warning. NWS IWX issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:48 UTC, 40 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:30 UTC.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 10:53 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

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.

The Northern Indiana radar (KIWX), 78 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:27 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

The live radar over the trackEvery 1998 tornado in IndianaEvery tornado in Indiana since 1950Warnings in force in Indiana nowThe forecast where you are

16 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

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.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.