EF0 tornado, Hillgrove, Indiana, December 28, 2025

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

December 28, 2025

Touchdown

9:22 PM EST (02:22 UTC)

Lifted

9:23 PM EST (02:23 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

60 yards (55 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Harrison County

Touchdown point

38.122, -86.178

Lift-off point

38.122, -86.176

Record number

2512282022-01

13 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LMK, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 77 mph.

• Distant trees in middle of pic snapped?
• Was this tree leaning south already? Grasses laying down convergent too. Weak tree down across road too.
• Hard to tell if this is old. Distant trampoline in tree line.
• A few small trees in this area. No observed structural dmg

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

During the evening hours on December 28th, a strong cold front moved across the Ohio Valley, bringing a line of showers and thunderstorms through the region ahead of the front. Before the front passed through, temperatures were able to warm into the 70s during the day on December 28th, with southerly flow also helping to increase moisture as dewpoint temperatures rose into the upper 50s and low 60s. As the line of storms began to push across southern Indiana, the instability began to greatly decrease as the line pushed from west to east across the area. Still, there was enough instability to sustain storms across much of the area, with scattered wind damage and strong wind gusts observed. One spin-up EF0 tornado occurred in southern Harrison County near the Central community, with maximum wind speeds estimated around 75 to 80 mph.

A National Weather Service storm damage survey determined that a brief EF0 tornado with peak winds around 75 mph touched down near the intersection of Lickford Bridge Road and Hill Grove Road northwest of Central in southern Harrison County. The tornado was on the ground for just over one-tenth of one mile with a maximum width estimated at 60 yards.

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

6 minutes of warning. NWS LMK issued a tornado warning for this county at 02:16 UTC, 6 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:45 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 Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:50 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 Louisville radar (KLVX), 26 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:20 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 2025 tornado in IndianaEvery tornado in Indiana since 1950Warnings in force in Indiana nowThe forecast where you are

12 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.