Tornadoes · United States · Indiana · 2017

EF1 tornado, Cannelburg, Indiana, April 5, 2017

This EF1 tornado ran 1.2 miles across Daviess County on April 5, 2017, touching down at 6:04 PM EDT and reaching 90 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $65,000 of property damage.

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.

  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.

The record

Rating
EF1
Date
April 5, 2017
Touchdown
6:04 PM EDT (22:04 UTC)
Lifted
6:05 PM EDT (22:05 UTC)
On the ground
1 minutes
Path length
1.2 miles (1.9 km)
Path width
90 yards (82 m)
Deaths
0
Injuries
0
Property damage
$65,000
County
Daviess County
Touchdown point
38.642, -86.981
Lift-off point
38.651, -86.962
Record number
1704051604-01

The damage survey

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS IND, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 100 mph.

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

A complex low pressure system brought damaging winds and hail to central Indiana, as well as one tornado reported southeast of Cannelburg during the afternoon of April 5th.

A brief EF1 tornado occurred shortly after 6 PM EDT, east of the city of Washington, near Cannelburg in Daviess County, Indiana, about 50 miles northeast of Evansville.||The tornado caused roof damage to a home, destroyed two barns and two outbuildings, a silo, and snapped two wooden power poles. No injuries or fatalities were reported.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 20:10 UTC and running to 22:48 UTC.

Issued (UTC)ExpiredProductOffice
20:10 UTC22:48 UTCSevere Thunderstorm WatchIND
20:41 UTC21:03 UTCSevere Thunderstorm WarningIND
21:33 UTC22:00 UTCSevere Thunderstorm WarningIND
21:58 UTC22:30 UTCSevere Thunderstorm WarningIND
22:07 UTC22:15 UTCTornado WarningIND

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 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 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), 12:00Z

10.1 hours before the tornado, 218 km from the path. April 5, 2017.

Skew-T log-pSkew-T log-p diagram, Lincoln, IL at 12:00Z on 2017-04-05Temperature and dew point through the depth of the atmosphere, with the mixed-layer parcel lifted from the surface. Mixed-layer CAPE 0 joules per kilogram, CIN -24716, lifted condensation level 685 meters above ground. Wind barbs in knots down the right edge.LCL10008507005003002001001 km2 km3 km6 km9 km12 km15 km-30°-20°-10°10°20°30°40°
Temperature in red, dew point in green, the mixed-layer parcel dashed. The warm shading is its CAPE, the cool shading the inhibition it has to break through.
HodographHodograph, Lincoln, IL at 12:00Z on 2017-04-05The wind through the lowest 10 kilometers as a curve, rings every 10 meters per second labeled in knots. Zero to 1 km storm-relative helicity 362 square meters per square second, 0 to 6 km bulk shear 62 knots.19395878Sfc1 km3 km6 km9 kmRMLM
The wind turning with height, colored by layer: ground to 1 km, 1 to 3 km, 3 to 6 km, 6 to 10 km. RM and LM are the right and left moving storms Bunkers' method gives; the shaded area is the 0 to 1 km storm-relative helicity.
Mixed-layer CAPE
0 J/kg
Mixed-layer CIN
-24716 J/kg
Surface CAPE
1 J/kg
Mixed-layer LCL
685 m above ground
0-6 km bulk shear
62 kt
0-1 km bulk shear
24 kt
0-1 km storm-relative helicity
362 m²/s²
0-3 km storm-relative helicity
572 m²/s²
Significant tornado parameter
0.0
Supercell composite
0.0
0-3 km lapse rate
3.4 K/km

Open this sounding in Storm Lab

Lincoln, IL (KILX), 00:00Z

1.9 hours after it, 218 km from the path. April 6, 2017.

Skew-T log-pSkew-T log-p diagram, Lincoln, IL at 00:00Z on 2017-04-06Temperature and dew point through the depth of the atmosphere, with the mixed-layer parcel lifted from the surface. Mixed-layer CAPE 0 joules per kilogram, CIN 0, lifted condensation level 593 meters above ground. Wind barbs in knots down the right edge.LCLEL10008507005003002001001 km2 km3 km6 km9 km12 km15 km-30°-20°-10°10°20°30°40°
Temperature in red, dew point in green, the mixed-layer parcel dashed. The warm shading is its CAPE, the cool shading the inhibition it has to break through.
HodographHodograph, Lincoln, IL at 00:00Z on 2017-04-06The wind through the lowest 10 kilometers as a curve, rings every 10 meters per second labeled in knots. Zero to 1 km storm-relative helicity 80 square meters per square second, 0 to 6 km bulk shear 41 knots.193958Sfc1 km3 km6 km9 kmRMLM
The wind turning with height, colored by layer: ground to 1 km, 1 to 3 km, 3 to 6 km, 6 to 10 km. RM and LM are the right and left moving storms Bunkers' method gives; the shaded area is the 0 to 1 km storm-relative helicity.
Mixed-layer CAPE
0 J/kg
Mixed-layer CIN
0 J/kg
Surface CAPE
11 J/kg
Mixed-layer LCL
593 m above ground
0-6 km bulk shear
41 kt
0-1 km bulk shear
6 kt
0-1 km storm-relative helicity
80 m²/s²
0-3 km storm-relative helicity
115 m²/s²
Significant tornado parameter
0.0
Supercell composite
0.0
0-3 km lapse rate
4.6 K/km

Open this sounding in Storm Lab

The radar

The Evansville,IN radar (KVWX), 78 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.

What was reported nearby

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

Time (UTC)ReportWhereCountyRemark
22:00 UTCHAIL 0.252 Se WashingtonDaviess, IN
22:05 UTCFUNNEL CLOUD2 Nw LoogooteeDaviess, INBRIEF FUNNEL CLOUD. REPORT RELAYED BY EMERGENCY MANAGER.
22:07 UTCTORNADO2 Sse CannelburgDaviess, INEMERGENCY MANAGER REPORTS POSSIBLE TORNADO DAMAGE. TIME ESTIMATED FROM RADAR.
22:21 UTCHAIL 0.253 S BloomfieldGreene, IN

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

This ground now

The live radar over the trackEvery 2017 tornado in IndianaEvery tornado in Indiana since 1950Warnings in force in Indiana nowThe forecast where you are

The other tornadoes of April 5, 2017

23 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

DateTimeRatingWherePath (mi)Width (yd)DeathsInjuriesDamage
April 510:49 AM CDTEF2Quitman, AL to GA10.41,140$600,000
April 512:03 PM EDTEF1Coweta, GA4.0350$20,000
April 512:09 PM EDTEF1Walton, GA2.9350$40,000
April 512:27 PM EDTEF2Randolph, GA16.91,320$150,000
April 51:17 PM EDTEF2Edgefield, SC7.21,0001
April 51:40 PM EDTEF0Sumter, GA3.2150$30,000
April 51:55 PM EDTEF1Dooly, GA8.8200$150,000
April 52:06 PM EDTEF0Lexington, SC0.075
April 53:05 PM EDTEF1Dodge, GA4.1350$200,000
April 52:10 PM CDTEF1Williamson, IL0.125$35,000
April 53:38 PM EDTEF2Laurens, GA20.2400$170,000
April 53:47 PM CDTEF1Bedford, TN7.1150$50,000
April 54:44 PM CDTEF0Cleburne, AL0.375
April 55:54 PM EDTEF1Henry, KY1.7100$100,000
April 54:59 PM CDTEF1Warren, TN3.41251$50,000
April 55:11 PM CDTEF1Metcalfe, KY0.750$150,000
April 55:12 PM CDTEF1Metcalfe, KY0.450$75,000
April 55:16 PM CDTEF1Green, KY0.8250$100,000
April 56:51 PM EDTEF0Clark, OH0.140$30,000
April 56:58 PM EDTEF0Clark, OH0.140$50,000
April 58:39 PM CDTEF1Chambers, AL2.0125
April 512:20 AM EDTEF0Anderson, SC0.150
April 512:30 AM EDTEF0Anderson, SC0.130$1,000

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.