Tornadoes · United States · Indiana · 2015
EF0 tornado, Boswell, Indiana, July 13, 2015
This EF0 tornado ran 0.1 miles across Benton County on July 13, 2015, touching down at 8:59 PM EDT and reaching 50 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
EF2111 to 135 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.
EF3136 to 165 mph
Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
EF5over 200 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
- EF0
- Date
- July 13, 2015
- Touchdown
- 8:59 PM EDT (00:59 UTC)
- Lifted
- 9:00 PM EDT (01:00 UTC)
- On the ground
- 1 minutes
- Path length
- 0.1 miles (0.2 km)
- Path width
- 50 yards (46 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Benton County
- Touchdown point
- 40.500, -87.360
- Lift-off point
- 40.500, -87.358
- Record number
- 1507131859-01
The damage survey
2 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS IND and NWS LOT, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 70 mph.
- Spotters report a brief tornado touchdown with no damage. Confirmed via photo.
Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.
What the Weather Service recorded
Scattered thunderstorms, including a few supercells, moved across northwest Indiana producing large hail and at least one brief tornado.
A short lived tornado touched down and was on the ground for around a minute. The tornado occurred in an open area with no damage.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.
The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 21:01 UTC and running to 04:00 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 13:28 UTC | 15:00 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Watch | LOT |
| 18:09 UTC | 00:00 UTC | Flood Warning | LOT |
| 21:01 UTC | 04:00 UTC | Tornado Watch | LOT |
| 23:40 UTC | 00:15 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | LOT |
| 00:27 UTC | 02:47 UTC | Flood Advisory | LOT |
| 00:42 UTC | 01:15 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | LOT |
| 01:00 UTC | 03:57 UTC | Flash Flood Warning | LOT |
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 forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Moderate Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:59 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 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), 00:00Z
1.0 hours before the tornado, 112 km from the path. July 14, 2015.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 1504 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -181 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 6921 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1986 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 49 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 25 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 147 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 162 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 14.9
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.7 K/km
Lincoln, IL (KILX), 12:00Z
11.0 hours after it, 112 km from the path. July 14, 2015.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 93 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -200 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1137 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1882 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 47 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 26 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 19 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 45 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.1
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 3.9 K/km
The radar
The Indianapolis radar (KIND), 127 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:56 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.
What was reported nearby
Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00:59 UTC | TORNADO | 2 Se Boswell | Benton, IN | SHORT LIVED EF-0 PATH LENGTH 1/10 MILE AND 50 YARDS WIDE. WAS ON THE GROUND FOR ONE MINUTE. WAS SPOTTED BY A STORM SPOTTER. OCCURRED IN AN OPEN AREA WITH NO DAMAGE. TIME APPROXIMATED BY RADAR. |
| 01:02 UTC | FUNNEL CLOUD | Templeton | Benton, IN | DUE EAST OF TEMPLETON ABOUT 10 MILES. |
| 01:15 UTC | TORNADO | 3 Ese Pine Village | Warren, IN | EF0 BASED ON TRAINED SPOTTER SITING IN CORNFIELDS |
| 02:47 UTC | HAIL 0.25 | 12 Nw Lafayette | Tippecanoe, IN | RELAYED THROUGH EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT |
| 03:00 UTC | HAIL 0.5 | West Lafayette | Tippecanoe, IN |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2015 tornado in IndianaEvery tornado in Indiana since 1950Warnings in force in Indiana nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of July 13, 2015
10 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 13 | 5:20 PM CDT | EF1 | Green, KY | 1.1 | 50 | $200,000 | ||
| July 13 | 5:58 PM CDT | EF0 | Adair, KY | 1.5 | 35 | $1,000 | ||
| July 13 | 6:13 PM CDT | EF0 | Cumberland, KY | 0.7 | 100 | $50,000 | ||
| July 13 | 6:33 PM CDT | EF0 | Richland, WI | 0.1 | 50 | $10,000 | ||
| July 13 | 6:34 PM CDT | EF3 | Rice, KS | 5.3 | 350 | $270,000 | ||
| July 13 | 7:18 PM CDT | EF0 | Clay, TN | 0.8 | 100 | $20,000 | ||
| July 13 | 9:15 PM EDT | EF0 | Warren, IN | 0.0 | 50 | |||
| July 13 | 9:25 PM EDT | EF1 | Putnam, IN | 0.6 | 50 | $50,000 | ||
| July 13 | 9:27 PM EDT | EF1 | Putnam, IN | 0.1 | 25 | $5,000 | ||
| July 13 | 1:15 AM EDT | EF0 | Kent, MI | 0.8 | 50 | $50,000 |
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.