EF1 tornado, Middletown to Springport, Indiana, May 27, 2019

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 27, 2019

Touchdown

8:39 PM EDT (00:39 UTC)

Lifted

8:42 PM EDT (00:42 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

2.5 miles (3.9 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$40,000

County

Henry County

Touchdown point

40.052, -85.483

Lift-off point

40.055, -85.436

Record number

1905271839-01

59 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS IND, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 132 mph.

• A portion of the roof on the northwest side of a barn had been blown off.
• West-facing barn door buckled.
• Multiple hardwood trees and large branches were snapped, uprooted, and downed west of the intersection of CR 700N and Raider Rd.
• Large tree branch snapped and large tree uprooted.

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

Thunderstorms developed near a warm front in an unstable environment, with plenty of low level shear/helicity, during the evening of Memorial Day, May 27th. This allowed the storms to rotate and rapidly became severe, producing tornadoes, large hail, and damaging winds. The storms and tornadoes damaged homes, brought down many trees and power lines, and produced heavy rain as well.

NWS Indianapolis found tornado damage 2 miles south of Middletown. The EF-1 rated tornado, with max wind speeds of 110 mph, brought down numerous branches and large tree trunks were snapped and lying in all directions. There was also a second hand report of someone who says they saw the tornado.

NWS Indianapolis found tornado damage 4 miles east-southeast of Middletown. The EF-1 rated tornado, with max wind speeds of 110 mph, snapped numerous large trees with the debris lying in various directions.||Metal siding was thrown across fields and there was roof damage to a couple of homes as well.

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

6 minutes of warning. NWS IND issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:33 UTC, 6 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 00:12 UTC and running to 02:29 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 19:58 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.

Anderson Municip (AID), 14 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Indianapolis radar (KIND), 80 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:40 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 2019 tornado in IndianaEvery tornado in Indiana since 1950Warnings in force in Indiana nowThe forecast where you are

62 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 63 of them

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.