After a wild evening of tornadoes, damaging wind gusts and heavy rain in Southwestern Indiana, now comes the detail work: cleaning up tree branches and limbs, fixing power lines and surveying damage.
Among the questions that National Weather Service officials will tackle in the coming days: Just how many tornadoes touched down across the area over a span of several hours Sunday night, how long were the tornadoes on the ground, and how intense were the storms?
The agency has survey teams in the field Monday morning, notably headed to Newburgh, Indiana, and Jefferson County, Illinois.
But as one NWS official noted Monday: Several more surveys will be needed in the coming days to gather a complete picture of Sunday evening’s outbreak.
Here’s what we know as of Monday morning, with more updates to come throughout the day.
Newburgh, Indiana tornado
The storm that caused damage in Newburgh actually spawned its first tornado warning shortly after 9 p.m. Sunday for areas in Downtown Evansville, as well as the East Side of the city.
The storm moved into Warrick County along Indiana 66 and damaged an apartment complex and shopping center near that highway’s intersection with Indiana 261.
The Indiana Department of Transportation said it would be replacing some 13 traffic signals and signal heads at Indiana 261 and Indiana 66 − a busy intersection just southeast of the damaged shopping center and apartment complex.
There were no major injuries reported in Newburgh.
Gibson County, Indiana tornado
Earlier Sunday evening in Gibson County, Indiana, a likely tornado caused damage near Owensville, according to Bruce Vanoven, the county’s sheriff.
“We have had some tornadoes touch down,” Vanoven said in a video posted to social media, citing a storm that struck near Indiana 65 and County Road 850 South. “… There’s been a lot of damage, some houses completely obliterated.”
The weather service posted the tornado warning for that storm at 7:09 p.m.
There was also damage reported at Blythe Chapel, a small church west of Gibson Southern High School.
Other possible tornadoes
Survey teams from the National Weather Service will spend the next few days examining damage at sites to confirm whether tornadoes touched down at places in the dozens of sites where warnings were issued Sunday evening.
A compilation from the Storm Prediction Center lists 11 tornado reports across Gibson, Pike, Warrick and Spencer counties. Another four tornadoes were reported in Wayne, White and Edwards counties in Southern Illinois.
The teams will work to determine the size and intensity of each tornado, where it first touched down and how long it was on the ground before lifting back into the clouds.
This story will be updated with new information as it becomes available.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Tornado outbreak cleanup, survey work starts in Southwestern Indiana
Reporting by Ryan Reynolds, Jon Webb, Houston Harwood and Sarah Loesch, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Ryan Reynolds, Jon Webb, Houston Harwood and Sarah Loesch, Evansville Courier & Press | USA TODAY Network
