EF0 tornado, Tell City, Indiana, September 8, 2018

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

September 8, 2018

Touchdown

2:38 PM CDT (19:38 UTC)

Lifted

2:44 PM CDT (19:44 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

1.8 miles (2.8 km)

Path width

80 yards (73 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$80,000

County

Perry County

Touchdown point

37.965, -86.770

Lift-off point

37.976, -86.740

Record number

1809081338-01

32 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LMK and 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.

• multiple uprooted trees in back part of property facing NW. trees near house had S and SW facing direction.
• several large limbs and a tree trunk snapped, leaves splattered on S side of vehicle
• several large limbs and a tree trunk snapped, leaves spattered against S side of vehicle
• multiple large limbs and a few trunks snapped on Thomas Lane, laying down to E and NE

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

On September 8th, the remnants of Tropical Storm Gordon was centered in southeast Missouri. Much of the moisture and energy from the system interacted with a stationary front running west to east through Kentucky. This produced efficient rainfall that caused flash flooding, and the environmental shear was strong enough to produce two tornadoes along the Ohio River in southern Indiana and north-central Kentucky.

The tornado touched down on Main Street in Tell City, midway between Steuben and Winkeireid Streets, doing minor damage to one roof and bending an amateur radio antenna tower. Moving east-northeast, the tornado damaged roofs and snapped several large tree limbs, as well as toppling a large but rotting tree that crushed the roof of a garage. A small shed was lofted out of its yard and became entangled in utility lines 30 yards to the northeast. As it crossed Winkeireid Street between 10th and 11th Streets, it buckled in a large overhead door and caused minor damage to the roof of the Indiana Southern Power building. Continuing to the northeast, a large metal carport was lifted and blown 50 feet north into neighboring trees, and more tree limbs were snapped, while a vinyl fence was blown northwest, as was a large trampoline and a patio umbrella, which was entangled in utility lines northwest of its origin.||The tornado continued to cause tree damage as it moved east of 14th street into a more rural area. On Brushy Fork Rd, the tornado snapped the trunks of three large trees, then continued northeast into a wooded area. The last evidence of the tornado was at the north end of Quaker Rd, where small branches were broken.

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

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, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:26 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 Louisville radar (KLVX), 71 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:40 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 2018 tornado in IndianaEvery tornado in Indiana since 1950Warnings in force in Indiana nowThe forecast where you are

5 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.