Tornadoes · United States · Indiana · 2025

EF1 tornado, Hudson to Moonlight Bay, Indiana, March 30, 2025

From Hudson to Moonlight Bay, this EF1 tornado ran 5.7 miles across Steuben County on March 30, 2025, touching down at 5:28 PM EDT and reaching 100 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $100,000 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.

  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.

The record

Rating
EF1
Date
March 30, 2025
Touchdown
5:28 PM EDT (21:28 UTC)
Lifted
5:35 PM EDT (21:35 UTC)
On the ground
7 minutes
Path length
5.7 miles (9.2 km)
Path width
100 yards (91 m)
Deaths
0
Injuries
0
Property damage
$100,000
County
Steuben County
Touchdown point
41.540, -85.110
Lift-off point
41.590, -85.020
Record number
2503301528-01

The damage survey

16 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS IWX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 94 mph.

  • Narrow section of snapped trees
  • Some smaller trunks snapped as well
  • Lots of smaller snapped branches up high in this area
  • Photo is across the lake at partially uprooted trees in varying directions, several large trees uprooted/snapped in the neighborhood where photo was taken.

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

A cold front pushed into the area during the afternoon and evening hours, interacting with decent shear and MLCAPE to allow for numerous thunderstorm development. Pockets of damaging winds occurred along with a total of six confirmed tornadoes (three in far southern Lower Michigan and three in northern Indiana).

An NWS damage survey confirmed a brief QLCS tornado embedded within a broad swath of damaging straight line winds in southwestern Steuben County, Indiana, on March 30th, 2025. The tornado likely originated in a field just north of Little Turkey Lake around 5:28 PM, before racing to the northeast. Several trees outbuildings were damaged to the northeast of Little Turkey Lake, most notably including a collapsed metal barn. Despite very limited ground evidence due to primarily open fields to the northeast, the tornado likely continued in a non continuous path over the next several minutes. A 50 to 100 yard swath of trees were snapped or uprooted on the southwest side of Long Lake, just west of W 500 S. The tornado then crossed Long Lake, before uprooting and snapping several trees and damaging homes along W Long Lake Road. No injuries were reported. Notable tree damage was observed in the boy scout camp just to the north. Aerial drone footage confirmed a convergent pattern to the downed trees, thus indicating the presence of a tornadic circulation along the damage path. Damage was consistent with a high end EF-0 to low end EF-1 tornado with maximum winds near 90 MPH. The tornado is believed to have ended shortly after, around 5:35 PM. In addition to the tornado, numerous trees and power lines were damaged due to straight line winds in excess of 75 MPH, along with some homes suffering roof and siding damage.

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

What forecasters said that day

The local office's own words before the tornado touched down, as it sent them, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service text.

NWS Northern Indiana wrote its last area forecast discussion before the tornado touched down at Mar 29, 7:16 PM EDT, 22 hours 12 minutes earlier.

Area forecast discussion, Mar 29, 7:16 PM EDT, 22 hours 12 minutes before
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  <title>Service Notice</title>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="index.css">
</head>
<body>
  <main class="wrap">
    <section class="card" role="status" aria-live="polite">
      <div class="status" id="status">Temporary Notice</div>
      <h1 id="headline">This service is currently unavailable.</h1>
      <p id="message1">
        The site you requested is temporarily down for maintenance or an unexpected outage.
      </p>
      <p id="message2">
        Please try again in a few minutes.
      </p>
      <p class="small" id="detail">
        If you are an administrator, restore upstream service and remove the redirect/fallback rule when normal operations resume.
      </p>
    </section>
  </main>
  <script src="index.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

The surface observations

Angola (ANQ), 8 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

Time (UTC)Temp (°F)Dew point (°F)WindGust (kt)Pressure (mb)Weather
00:00 UTC

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

The radar

The Northern Indiana radar (KIWX), 58 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:30 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.

This ground now

The live radar over the trackEvery 2025 tornado in IndianaEvery tornado in Indiana since 1950Warnings in force in Indiana nowThe forecast where you are

The other tornadoes of March 30, 2025

42 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

DateTimeRatingWherePath (mi)Width (yd)DeathsInjuriesDamage
March 3011:46 AM CDTEF0Jackson, MS2.475
March 301:20 PM CDTEF1Champaign, IL12.1300
March 301:37 PM CDTEF0Jackson, MS0.975$5,000
March 302:28 PM CDTEF0Newton, IN6.1200
March 303:22 PM CDTEF1Starke, IN3.27501$110,000
March 304:52 PM EDTEF1Cass, MI2.6100$100,000
March 304:56 PM EDTEF1Cass, MI2.0200$50,000
March 305:16 PM EDTEF1Noble, IN1.4200$100,000
March 305:17 PM EDTEF0Saint Joseph, MI3.6300$60,000
March 305:42 PM EDTEF0Kent, MI4.2150
March 305:58 PM EDTEF1Kent, MI1.7250
March 306:00 PM EDTEF0Kent, MI2.4300
March 306:00 PM EDTEF0Kent, MI5.0150
March 305:02 PM CDTEF1Ripley, MO8.650$55,000
March 306:05 PM EDTEF0Newaygo, MI2.850
March 306:07 PM EDTEF0Ionia, MI2.2150
March 306:20 PM EDTEF0Ingham, MI2.750
March 306:21 PM EDTEF0Ionia, MI0.525
March 306:40 PM EDTEF1Ingham, MI5.3150
March 306:45 PM EDTEF0Monroe, IN0.130$15,000
March 306:51 PM EDTEF0Monroe, MI0.5100
March 307:00 PM EDTEF1Shiawassee, MI0.9100
March 306:05 PM CDTEF1Alexander, IL23.9150$75,000
March 307:54 PM EDTEF0Ripley, IN2.2100$150,000
March 308:02 PM EDTEF1Ripley, IN4.8200$200,000
March 307:39 PM CDTEF0Poinsett, AR4.8150$3,000
March 308:40 PM EDTEF0Butler, OH6.9150$250,000
March 308:52 PM EDTEF0Butler, OH11.7200$265,000
March 309:07 PM EDTEF0Warren, OH3.0150$100,000
March 308:20 PM CDTEF1Breckinridge, KY2.530
March 309:23 PM EDTEF1Meade, KY30.35001
March 309:35 PM EDTEF1Fayette, OH3.9250$250,000
March 309:35 PM EDTEF1Meade, KY7.250
March 309:48 PM EDTEF1Jefferson, KY5.4301
March 3010:10 PM EDTEF0Franklin, OH2.6250$85,000
March 3010:23 PM EDTEF1Spencer, KY2.580
March 3010:07 PM CDTEF1Humphreys, TN2.0150$100,000
March 3010:25 PM CDTEF0Humphreys, TN2.5300$100,000
March 3011:07 PM CDTEF0Hickman, TN2.2150$50,000
March 3011:12 PM CDTEF0Perry, TN0.375$50,000
March 3012:00 AM CDTEF2Maury, TN5.6350$500,000
March 3012:14 AM CDTEF1Maury, TN4.1300$50,000

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.