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Severe Weather 4/17/26

US_Highway15 said:
I feel the exact same way about here in Northern Indiana (talking mainly around South Bend). It's insane how many risks we've been under this season, and it's ended up underwhelming (minor exception being last night).

I was telling someone else who's also interested in severe weather at my work that we're due for a higher-end outbreak of violent tornadoes around here. Much like Wisconsin, it's been a happy accident that the last "outbreak" we got around here specifically was October 24th 2001
where the worst tornado we got was an F3 that tracked through three counties. That setup was very reminiscent of the QLCS tornado outbreak that hit Alabama on the morning of 4/27/11.



As a whole of Indiana, the last outbreak that the state's had (another linear QLCS tornado outbreak) was 11/17/13 where the highest rating was an EF3. Which that day we dodged a huge bullet, as the major talking point was if the supercells in Illinois were gonna remain long-track discrete, or if they were gonna form a line, in which it did and we just had QLCS tornadoes.



Besides that though, the last historic "violent" outbreak Indiana has had, was our part in the Super Outbreak of 1974 where we had the historic F4 tornado track through the state, as well as a few other tornadoes that day in the state.



Of course the only other historic violent outbreak, besides the Super Outbreak was of course Palm Sunday in 1965.



As a whole, I just feel like we're due for another Palm Sunday-esque outbreak, similar to what Dan said about Wisconsin.
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A Palm Sunday outbreak could still take a while since the original was, let's be blunt, a super outbreak.
 
IIRC, Locomusic on this forum also found that a few of the WI tornadoes from Palm Sunday were also rather high end (while brief). Even though they had their ratings botched. All rated in the f1-2 category despite regularly approaching f4 according Grazulis.
 
Aaron Rider said:
A Palm Sunday outbreak could still take a while since the original was, let's be blunt, a super outbreak.
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eep said:
IIRC, Locomusic on this forum also found that a few of the WI tornadoes from Palm Sunday were also rather high end (while brief). Even though they had their ratings botched. All rated in the f1-2 category despite regularly approaching f4 according Grazulis.
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I think that's why the Palm Sunday '65 has long been such a source of fascination for me. It's really the only outbreak in the known record that impacted the entire upper Midwest/western Great Lakes region from Iowa/Wisconsin all the way to Lake Erie with significant supercell tornadoes, whereas an event like 3/31/23, while prolific, nearly all of the tornadoes east of the Mississippi were from the QLCS.
 
DanLarsen34 said:
Regardless of where yesterday ends up in Wisconsin history, I do think we got quite lucky this week.

Wisconsin is, in my view, absolutely due for a higher-end outbreak that involves intense/violent tornadoes. As set-ups like this potentially become more common with climate change, we’re going to see an event that not only breaks the single day tornado record, but ends up producing the kind of event that every other state around us has had at one point in the past century.

I think it’s a bit of a happy accident that the state has 1) not seen a violent rated tornado since the Oakfield F5 in 1996 (although I’ll note the 2007 June outbreak that produced the very long track tornado through places like Menominee reservation was almost certainly violent. The forest damage is some of the most impressive I’ve ever seen, and I believe the scar may still be visible on satellite?), and 2) that we’ve avoided having an higher-end event with at least a few intense/violent tornadoes in a single day for decades. Even when we’ve had set-ups that held that kind of potential (April 10, 2011 and June 7, 2007 just to name the two best examples in my lifetime), we’ve dodged that bullet so far.

The fact that the single day record is just 27 tornadoes goes to show that the state has been incredibly lucky to some extent.
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The 2007 scar is indeed still very visible. In fact, Friday's tornado in the same general area almost followed its path!!
 
andyhb said:
Hi, just checking in on those 10 AM bust calls. Did they work out?
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I mean, it wasn't a top-end, off the chains tornado outbreak...but there were always known caveats, and that's why SPC stuck with the enhanced risk, and didn't go moderate or high.

Although that makes me all the more curious why they stuck with the Enh coming up on two years ago (4/26), which *was* about as off-the-chains as you can get in a relatively localized area.
 
Friday was a interesting case again of people thinking that the SPC played the wrong cards. They should've upgraded to MDT as the event was ongoing, or that it was obvious that the event was gonna perform.

Hindsight was 50/50 with this event, and it came down to storm mode. EML advecting north and a more discrete mode than was initially shown on CAMs, and you had a significant event. That is why the CIG system exists to advocate for situations of low confidence for upgrade but acknowledging that potential is there. The SPC did very well with the CIG2.

I seen some sporadic talk about a upgrade at 20z as the event was taking place but I think a lot forget that the SPC strives on lead time and considers it important. A moderate risk wouldn't have made a difference in terms of public messaging since the event was already ongoing. The only time i recall them upgrading a higher end event as it was ongoing was 5/22/04 and that's 22 years ago, almost.

Clearly, they didn't think it did much anyways in the sense of things. I seen a lot of slight backlash towards the SPC, and I'm no victim to it either, i mean I called Broyles wrong on 4/2/25 and that was a HARD "weenie" move. That day on, i swore to just put my foot where my mouth is now on and just be more open minded to things unlike then.

The main problem is that people solely forecast off CAMs nowadays and they are a helpful tool if used correctly besides thinking UH tracks mean violent tornadoes (nonsense), and i told someone I talk to regularly in different comment sections about Friday's events about the EML that morning. They responded with "i don't buy it, the CAMs still say a messy mode is in play" see the issue with reliance here? There's a line between being too conservative, and a streamer actually called me out before Friday for downplaying the event even though I was clearly stating failure modes for the southern portion which just didn't do anything at all, the northern portion had only trended inside the CAMs range. There was a good point someone made on Tuesday's thread about that people seem to get frustrated when you say there's downtrend the day of, and that they just seemingly make a excuse to say that the CAMs are seeing wrong and try to say that the event hasn't started. I've been on this road a lot recently with my posts, so i think you'll get me here LOL. I'll have to find who made that post because I seen it while I was inactive on the forum and it was bang on.
 
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