EF2 tornado, Selma to Selma Arpt, Indiana, March 14, 2024

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 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

March 14, 2024

Touchdown

7:34 PM EDT (23:34 UTC)

Lifted

7:40 PM EDT (23:40 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

4.5 miles (7.2 km)

Path width

175 yards (160 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$4.0 million

County

Delaware County

Touchdown point

40.203, -85.317

Lift-off point

40.185, -85.237

Record number

2403141734-01

68 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 120 mph.

• Uprooted and snapped trees. Roofing material off well built homes. Starting point for Winchester.
• Roof damage and windows blown out
• Center line. Few rotten trees down and garage door blown off
• Poles bent to north. Tornado reportedly was just south of this road through field.

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

Two rounds of thunderstorms in total brought severe weather to half of central Indiana's counties. During the late morning to early afternoon hours on the 14th, a decaying line of storms brought prolific small hail and isolated wind damage to much of the state.||Severe weather returned when early evening rotating supercells produced widespread large hail across north central Indiana, which gradually spread towards the southeast when a supercell tracking east of Muncie produced additional large hail, damaging winds, and two strong tornadoes. An EF2 impacted Selma in eastern Delaware County, before a long-track EF3 crossed much of Randolph County, with significant damage and one fatality in Winchester, before continuing into Ohio. The governor of Indiana signed an executive order declaring both Delaware and Randolph Counties disaster zones.

The tornado started northwest of Selma northwest of Truitt Rd damaging roofs|on homes. It then moved east southeast through Selma damaging a|number of homes, uprooting and snapping trees, and knocking over|some utility poles. Highest wind intensity in Selma, indicated by|extensive damage to a couple homes, was estimated at 120 mph, or|EF2 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. Maximum path width through Selma|was about 125-175 yards.

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

13 minutes of warning. NWS IND issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:21 UTC, 13 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 21:17 UTC and running to 01:09 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:37 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.

Muncie (MIE), 11 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Indianapolis radar (KIND), 101 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:34 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 2024 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.