EF1 tornado, English Lake, Indiana, June 7, 2015

1. EF065 to 85 mph

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

2. EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado

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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

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

6. 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.

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

EF1

Date

June 7, 2015

Touchdown

5:31 PM CDT (22:31 UTC)

Lifted

5:36 PM CDT (22:36 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.4 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Starke County

Touchdown point

41.244, -86.823

Lift-off point

41.246, -86.820

Record number

1506071631-01

24 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS IWX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 95 mph.

• multiple large trees uprooted to the NW
• SDFP: Limited shingle damage and age of house suggest expected wind speed likely works. Somewhere around 80 mph.
• piece of shed from other side of house
• trees uprooted facing east

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A warm front lifted through the area on the afternoon of June 7 which advected a moist low level environment into northern Illinois. This increased instability by late afternoon as storms initiated ahead of a cold front across central Illinois. Storms congealed into a multicell cluster and a bookend vorticity formed on the northern edge of the storms. This is where the tornado occurred in Starke County.

A NWS storm survey confirmed an EF-1 tornado embedded within in sporadic wind damage. The tornado touched down in the vicinity of the 6350 block of County Road 400 South and continued east-northeast to the 6250 block of County Road 400 South where four to five dozen trees were either uprooted or snapped. There were no trees left standing in the front yard of this residence. The tornado dissipated shortly after as it turned towards the northwest and continued into the field to the north. The extensive damage in this isolated area was likely associated with the slow forward motion of this tornado as well as wet sandy soil in the area. The tornado was on the ground for around two tenths of a mile with a maximum width of 100 yards and maximum estimated wind speeds of around 95 mph.

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

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 severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 20:56 UTC and running to 23:09 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:40 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), 95 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:28 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.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2015 tornado in IndianaEvery tornado in Indiana since 1950Warnings in force in Indiana nowThe forecast where you are

8 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.