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.
EF065 to 85 mph
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado
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
- 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) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20:10 UTC | 22:48 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Watch | IND |
| 20:41 UTC | 21:03 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | IND |
| 21:33 UTC | 22:00 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | IND |
| 21:58 UTC | 22:30 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | IND |
| 22:07 UTC | 22:15 UTC | Tornado Warning | IND |
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.
- 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
Lincoln, IL (KILX), 00:00Z
1.9 hours after it, 218 km from the path. April 6, 2017.
- 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
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) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22:00 UTC | HAIL 0.25 | 2 Se Washington | Daviess, IN | |
| 22:05 UTC | FUNNEL CLOUD | 2 Nw Loogootee | Daviess, IN | BRIEF FUNNEL CLOUD. REPORT RELAYED BY EMERGENCY MANAGER. |
| 22:07 UTC | TORNADO | 2 Sse Cannelburg | Daviess, IN | EMERGENCY MANAGER REPORTS POSSIBLE TORNADO DAMAGE. TIME ESTIMATED FROM RADAR. |
| 22:21 UTC | HAIL 0.25 | 3 S Bloomfield | Greene, 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.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 5 | 10:49 AM CDT | EF2 | Quitman, AL to GA | 10.4 | 1,140 | $600,000 | ||
| April 5 | 12:03 PM EDT | EF1 | Coweta, GA | 4.0 | 350 | $20,000 | ||
| April 5 | 12:09 PM EDT | EF1 | Walton, GA | 2.9 | 350 | $40,000 | ||
| April 5 | 12:27 PM EDT | EF2 | Randolph, GA | 16.9 | 1,320 | $150,000 | ||
| April 5 | 1:17 PM EDT | EF2 | Edgefield, SC | 7.2 | 1,000 | 1 | ||
| April 5 | 1:40 PM EDT | EF0 | Sumter, GA | 3.2 | 150 | $30,000 | ||
| April 5 | 1:55 PM EDT | EF1 | Dooly, GA | 8.8 | 200 | $150,000 | ||
| April 5 | 2:06 PM EDT | EF0 | Lexington, SC | 0.0 | 75 | |||
| April 5 | 3:05 PM EDT | EF1 | Dodge, GA | 4.1 | 350 | $200,000 | ||
| April 5 | 2:10 PM CDT | EF1 | Williamson, IL | 0.1 | 25 | $35,000 | ||
| April 5 | 3:38 PM EDT | EF2 | Laurens, GA | 20.2 | 400 | $170,000 | ||
| April 5 | 3:47 PM CDT | EF1 | Bedford, TN | 7.1 | 150 | $50,000 | ||
| April 5 | 4:44 PM CDT | EF0 | Cleburne, AL | 0.3 | 75 | |||
| April 5 | 5:54 PM EDT | EF1 | Henry, KY | 1.7 | 100 | $100,000 | ||
| April 5 | 4:59 PM CDT | EF1 | Warren, TN | 3.4 | 125 | 1 | $50,000 | |
| April 5 | 5:11 PM CDT | EF1 | Metcalfe, KY | 0.7 | 50 | $150,000 | ||
| April 5 | 5:12 PM CDT | EF1 | Metcalfe, KY | 0.4 | 50 | $75,000 | ||
| April 5 | 5:16 PM CDT | EF1 | Green, KY | 0.8 | 250 | $100,000 | ||
| April 5 | 6:51 PM EDT | EF0 | Clark, OH | 0.1 | 40 | $30,000 | ||
| April 5 | 6:58 PM EDT | EF0 | Clark, OH | 0.1 | 40 | $50,000 | ||
| April 5 | 8:39 PM CDT | EF1 | Chambers, AL | 2.0 | 125 | |||
| April 5 | 12:20 AM EDT | EF0 | Anderson, SC | 0.1 | 50 | |||
| April 5 | 12:30 AM EDT | EF0 | Anderson, SC | 0.1 | 30 | $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.