EF1 tornado, Johnson, Indiana, May 11, 2016

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

May 11, 2016

Touchdown

5:02 PM CDT (22:02 UTC)

Lifted

5:03 PM CDT (22:03 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

1.5 miles (2.4 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5,000

County

Gibson County

Touchdown point

38.265, -87.753

Lift-off point

38.275, -87.729

Record number

1605111602-01

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

• tree snapped and branches down

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

During the afternoon, multi-cell thunderstorm clusters developed along a warm front that was oriented from west to east along the Interstate 64 corridor. Surface dew points near and south of the front were in the lower 70's, which contributed to strong instability. Thunderstorm clusters moved eastward along the warm front, but they also developed southward into the strongest instability. Moderately strong deep-layer wind shear resulted in the formation of an organized mesoscale convective system accompanied by locally damaging winds, isolated large hail, and isolated street flooding. There was also an isolated tornado associated with a short-lived supercell structure. A second line of storms arrived late in the evening and continued overnight. This second line produced isolated street flooding.

Trees were snapped and uprooted. The tornado track ended on Indiana Route 165 about two miles west of Owensville. Maximum winds were estimated near 95 mph.

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

0 minutes of warning. NWS PAH issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:02 UTC, 0 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 22:30 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 20:29 UTC and running to 00:00 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 0.05 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 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 Evansville,IN radar (KVWX), 2 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:01 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

3 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.