Tornadoes · United States · Indiana · 2022
EF0 tornado, Stone, Indiana, August 20, 2022
This EF0 tornado ran 1.7 miles across Randolph County on August 20, 2022, touching down at 3:29 PM EDT and reaching 20 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $15,000 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 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
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
- EF0
- Date
- August 20, 2022
- Touchdown
- 3:29 PM EDT (19:29 UTC)
- Lifted
- 3:33 PM EDT (19:33 UTC)
- On the ground
- 4 minutes
- Path length
- 1.7 miles (2.8 km)
- Path width
- 20 yards (18 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $15,000
- County
- Randolph County
- Touchdown point
- 40.222, -84.997
- Lift-off point
- 40.236, -84.969
- Record number
- 2208201329-01
The damage survey
1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS IND, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 70 mph.
- Damage to an outbuilding. Metal roofing and some roofing structure thrown downwind. Minor damage to metal walls of building.
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
Scattered afternoon showers and isolated strong thunderstorms included one severe event, a brief EF0 landspout tornado in north-central Randolph County.
A brief tornado touched down about one mile south-southeast of Stone, at the homestead immediately west-northwest of the intersection of county roads West 400 North and North 100 West. This landspout damaged the roof and metal encasing structure of an old outbuilding. Parts of the roof were thrown downwind, with a few 2x4 beams scattered between the building and thrown roof. Eyewitnesses reported the landspout lifted and then dropped in open fields for a few minutes, with no further damage noted, while tracking to the east-northeast.
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.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19:33 UTC | 19:45 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 Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 16:32 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.
Cncnati-Daytn, OH (KILN), 12:00Z
7.5 hours before the tornado, 135 km from the path. August 20, 2022.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 950 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -31 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 16 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1075 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 26 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 7 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 35 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 92 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.2
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.3 K/km
The radar
The Indianapolis radar (KIND), 125 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:29 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16:59 UTC | FLOOD | 1 S Bluffton | Wells, IN | STREET FLOODING. POSTING VIA SOCIAL MEDIA. |
| 17:05 UTC | HEAVY RAIN 2 | 1 S Bluffton | Wells, IN | REPORTED VIA SOCIAL MEDIA. |
| 17:10 UTC | HEAVY RAIN 2.1 | Bluffton | Wells, IN | |
| 19:30 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | 4 Nnw Winchester | Randolph, IN | POSSIBLE TORNADO. DAMAGE TO OUTBUILDING. TIME IS ESTIMATED FROM RADAR. |
| 19:30 UTC | TORNADO | 4 Nnw Winchester | Randolph, IN | CORRECTS PREVIOUS TSTM WND DMG REPORT FROM 4 NNW WINCHESTER. CONFIRMED BRIEF EF0 LANDSPOUT TORNADO. DAMAGE TO THE ROOFING STRUCTURE OF AN OUTBUILDING. |
| 19:40 UTC | TSTM WND GST 45 | 1 Sw Salamonia | Jay, IN | |
| 19:45 UTC | HEAVY RAIN 1.72 | Bluffton | Wells, IN | AUTOMATED STATION. |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2022 tornado in IndianaEvery tornado in Indiana since 1950Warnings in force in Indiana nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of August 20, 2022
3 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
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.