EF0 tornado, Hastings, Indiana, August 20, 2016

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

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

2. EF186 to 110 mph

   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

EF0

Date

August 20, 2016

Touchdown

2:53 PM EDT (18:53 UTC)

Lifted

2:57 PM EDT (18:57 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

1.6 miles (2.6 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Kosciusko County

Touchdown point

41.368, -85.930

Lift-off point

41.380, -85.904

Record number

1608201253-01

6 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS IWX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 70 mph.

• Initial touchdown. Minor roof damage to residence on west side of road.
• End point of tornado. Tree limbs snapped and corn layed down.
• Minor roof/shingle damage to residence. Some splattering of dirt/debris noted on south side of residence. A few tree limbs snapped and twisted up into a downed power line from the road to the residence.
• Approximate end of circulation based on photographic estimation.

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

A seasonably strong cold front approached the area during the afternoon hours. Showers with isolated thunderstorms developed ahead of this front and moved through northern Indiana, southwest Lower Michigan and northwest Ohio. Although the showers and isolated storms mainly produced gusty sub-severe winds and heavy rainfall, a few storms produced isolated wind damage and three weak tornadoes.

A flyover of farm land southwest of Milford revealed a sporadic path of damage through several soy bean and corn fields. The circulation was found to touch down in a field on North County Road 425 West, about a half mile north of West County Road 900 North. An erratic pattern was observed in the crops suggesting a weak, disorganized circulation was in contact with the ground at times, crossing West County Road 1000 N and N County Road 300 West before dissipating. Damage to the crops was not visible from road survey. At the present time, the EF scale does not identify any crops as a Damage Indicator (used to determine the intensity of the tornado) and no other objects were impacted. Given the evidence of a weak tornado, this will be classified as EF-0 with maximum winds of 65 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.

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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 16:28 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), 18 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:53 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 2016 tornado in IndianaEvery tornado in Indiana since 1950Warnings in force in Indiana nowThe forecast where you are

12 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.