EF1 tornado, Mooresville, Indiana, April 8, 2020

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

April 8, 2020

Touchdown

8:43 PM EDT (00:43 UTC)

Lifted

8:46 PM EDT (00:46 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.0 miles (1.6 km)

Path width

35 yards (32 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$500,000

County

Morgan County

Touchdown point

39.613, -86.377

Lift-off point

39.606, -86.362

Record number

2004081843-01

14 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 101 mph.

• Splatter on south side of building and debris from building and surrounding trees in the vicinity
• roof material that is to the SW from where it originated
• Debris to the north (?) of where it originated

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

A severe weather outbreak occurred during the evening hours of April 8th. A line of severe thunderstorms moved through central Indiana intitially causing large hail and damaging winds. As the storms progressed, the hail threat gradually decreased with wind speeds rapidly increasing. In addition to widespread 60 to 70 mph winds, the line of storms had several mesovortices that led to areas of enhanced winds up to 90 mph and produced an EF-1 tornado in Mooresville, IN.

The tornado began northwest of the intersection of concord and main in Mooresville before doing significant roof and tree damage to portions of downtown. The largest damage occurred to a brick building where the roof was uplifted and fell causing structural damage to the building. The tornado continued to track to the southeast before damaging a large picnic shelter and crossing State Road 67. The tornado then |lifted. In addition to the tornado, an area about 200 yards on either side of the tornado experienced straight line winds that gusted as high as 70 to 80 mph that caused additional damage.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 23:25 UTC and running to 01:42 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 Indianapolis radar (KIND), 13 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:42 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 2020 tornado in IndianaEvery tornado in Indiana since 1950Warnings in force in Indiana nowThe forecast where you are

24 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.