EF1 tornado, Tulip to Ridgeport, Indiana, May 16, 2025

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.

Rating

EF1

Date

May 16, 2025

Touchdown

7:15 PM EDT (23:15 UTC)

Lifted

7:19 PM EDT (23:19 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

1.8 miles (2.9 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000

County

Greene County

Touchdown point

39.083, -86.856

Lift-off point

39.084, -86.823

Record number

2505161715-01

62 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 132 mph.

• Pole barn destroyed, quonset hut had metal roof taken off.
• Trees uprooted and convergent. RV flipped to south.
• Lots of tree damage and partial roof damage to homes. Width about 200 yards wide.
• Roof off barn thrown to SSW.

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

A persistently humid and unseasonably warm air mass provided ample instability late on the 16th. Meanwhile, mid-level forcing streamed into central Indiana from west to east, around the southeastern periphery of a strong mid-latitude cyclone positioned over the Upper Midwest. These ingredients combined to produce rotating storms with damaging winds and tornadoes across southern central Indiana through the late day.

The episode's second tornado was the second of three tornadoes spawned from a rotating supercell that crossed southern central Indiana. This was the weakest of the three supercell circulations, tracking only briefly within northeastern Greene County. The tornado tracked in an overall west to east direction, from about 1.5 miles to about 3.5 miles east of the Tulip community. The track was indicated by overall widespread tree damage from high resolution sateillte imagery, from a quarter mile west-northwest of the intersection of East Tulip Road and North Viaduct Road to a half mile north-northwest of the intersection of East Tulip Road and North Parsley Road. Peak wind gusts were 94 mph.

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

24 minutes of warning. NWS IND issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:51 UTC, 24 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:00 UTC and running to 01:45 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 Moderate 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 19:31 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), 84 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:16 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

26 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.