EF0 tornado, Ferndale to Hollandsburg, Indiana, April 2, 2026

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, as surveyed

EF0, preliminary

Date

April 2, 2026

Touchdown

7:36 PM EDT (23:36 UTC)

Lifted

7:37 PM EDT (23:37 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.2 miles (0.3 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Parke County

Touchdown point

39.746, -87.057

Lift-off point

39.748, -87.055

Highest wind the damage implies

85 mph

Surveyed by

NWS IND

The office's name for it

ParkeCoTor

Survey last edited

April 6, 2026

Record number

None yet. SPC numbers 2026 in the spring of 2027.

A bookend vortex moving near Cecil Harden produced a brief tornado that crossed East Mallard Drive. Drone imagery showed clear signs of convergence within tree damage in a grove of trees between Meadows Lane and Mallard Drive with 30-40 trees either uprooted or snapped along the short path. Structure damage was limited to minor siding damage outside of damage caused by falling trees. Additional damage was found several miles both upstream and downstream of the tornado but was determined to be just localized areas of enhanced straight-line winds.

Written by NWS IND in the NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit. A survey is revised as better evidence arrives.

5 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS IND, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 85 mph.

• Grove of trees flattened, none very large but some smaller ones also snapped
• Clear convergent signature in downed trees
• 3 snapped pines, using uprooted to cap wind speeds at 85 mph based on little to no damage to buildings on either side
• Porch partially destroyed, could have been from the tree fall

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

On April 2nd's early evening, an upper level short wave disturbance crossing the Middle Mississppi Valley, and associated 1000-mb surface low pressure tracking quickly from Iowa to Wiscomsin, placed central Indiana within its warm sector. The conditional set-up for severe weather included steep 0-3 km lapse rates, and corresponding DCAPE values of 500-800 J/kg extending along and just east of the Wabash Valley. A resultant quasi-linear convective system (QLCS) crossed western central Indiana, producing widely scattered damaging straight line winds. The system's overall high cloud base mitigated any tornado production except where a brief EF-0 was spawned in Parke County.

A very brief EF-0 tornado dropped from locally lower ceilings within a bookend vortex embedded in the QLCS near Cecil Harden Lake, 1.3 miles southeast of the Hollandsburg community. The bookend vortex crossed the lake, spawning the weak spin-up one-quarter mile south of the lake's southeastern shoreline; along its 900-foot track, the tornado then crossed residential roads East Mallard Drive and South Ebert Drive, before ending 400 feet south of the lake's shore.||Drone imagery showed clear convergence of downed trees in a grove between Meadows Lane and Mallard Drive; 30 to 40 additional trees were either uprooted or snapped along the path. Incident structural damage was limited to minor siding loss. The tornado's damage was mainly vegetation, with peak ind gusts of 85 mph for the event.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

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, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:56 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), 66 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:37 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 2026 tornado in IndianaEvery tornado in Indiana since 1950Warnings in force in Indiana nowThe forecast where you are

12 more have been surveyed in the United States that day, so far.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. A survey can be revised, so the rating, the path and the casualties can all still change.

NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit, the record the survey teams file from the damage, and NOAA Storm Prediction Center storm reports. Neither is the official database for 2026, which SPC publishes in the spring of 2027.