EF0 tornado, Middletown, Indiana, May 7, 2024

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

May 7, 2024

Touchdown

8:02 PM EDT (00:02 UTC)

Lifted

8:03 PM EDT (00:03 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.8 miles (1.3 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$30,000

County

Shelby County

Touchdown point

39.470, -85.645

Lift-off point

39.469, -85.630

Record number

2405071802-01

19 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 110 mph.

• Southern most point of inflow.
• Clear signs of larger limbs thrown east and northeast. Circulation pattern seen in tall grass.
• Lots of limbs broken on inflow side. Smaller trees uprooted but ground very soft. Little structural damage to nearby home other than few shingles off.
• Sporadic trees uprooted and large limbs broken. Many trees fine. Weak convergence noted in trees.

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

At times robust south-southwesterly breezes brought unseasonably high dewpoints in the upper 60s and temperatures around 80 degrees, which led a favorable set-up for severe thunderstorms that also included high low-level helicity, and a 40-knot low-level jet stream ahead of an approaching cold front, all under adequate divergence aloft from the right exit region of a cyclonically curved jet streak.||Numerous rotating thunderstorms resulted through late day and evening hours, which produced widespread marginally severe hail across ten counties along and to the east-southeast of the Interstate 70 corridor, with strongest cells producing 1.50-1.75 inch hail and/or widely scattered wind damage from Clay County to Decatur County, as well as five weak tornadoes within Shelby, Rush and Decatur Counties. The tornadoes caused mainly tree damage and some minor structural damage. Several supercells actually tracked over the same areas where tornadoes occurred, which made video footage a key part of proper event verification. Some of the tornadoes may have actually had longer track lengths, but this could not be deciphered given the broad open farm fields. Witness reports indicated that some of the tornadoes were small, rope tornadoes that bounced across the landscape.||Less intense thunderstorms north of the Interstate 70 corridor produced small hail over a few zones, as well as a funnel cloud in Tipton County before an early evening cell downed a few trees in eastern Randolph County.

This second of five central Indiana tornadoes tracked slightly south of east, from just west of County Road 725 East to just west of County Road 800 East (ending 200 feet west of the Rush County line). Numerous small to medium size trees were found uprooted or with large limbs broken off. Nearby homes along County Road 725 East had little damage other than some shingles off and gutters torn off. A very old barn had some roof damage. Drone footage showed a few trees had larger limbs broken/snapped close to ending point of this line. Winds were 74 to 85 mph; peak intensity occurred when it was first spawned and also just east of County Road 725.

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

1 minute of warning. NWS IND issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:01 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:08 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 18:28 UTC and running to 03:39 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 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:45 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), 61 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:05 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

52 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.