NWS Confirms Tornado Touchdown Sunday Near Silver Lake
Posted
David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
The National Weather Service has confirmed that an EF-2 tornado passed through Kosciusko County south of Silver Lake Sunday afternoon. NWS meteorologist Katie Gross said that according to the preliminary report, the maximum estimated wind speed of the tornado was 125 mph, with a maximum estimated path width of 150 yards. Its path length was 4 miles. It was located about 2.5 miles south of Silver Lake to 3 miles east of the town. The tornado started at approximately 3:43 p.m. Sunday and ended around 3:48 p.m. “It just clipped the top of Wabash County,” Gross said. An EF-2 tornado has wind gusts between 111 to 135 mph, she stated. She said it was the only tornado the NWS has confirmed, but wind gusts of 60 mph were confirmed 2 miles southwest of North Webster. Kosciusko County Emergency Management Director Ed Rock this morning reported he was down at Silver Lake Monday night. “I was down there last night talking to the Martin family, making sure they had stuff reported on the state system,” Rock said. While there, he said about 100 people were helping the Martin family. “They moved over 600 dairy cattle to other locations so they could be maintained with the rebuilding process,” Rock said. He said he’s still trying to get people to report their damage to the state. The state has a website at www.in.gov/dhs for people to report their damage. In the middle of the page is a link for people to click on that states “Report Damage from Severe Weather – November 17”. Rock said people should fill out the form at that link and it will go toward the state’s disaster declaration. During his investigation of the storm damage in the county, Rock said he saw debris spread over 1-1/2 miles. A house and a couple of barns were destroyed. The Tucker family, south of Mentone at CR 700S and Ind. 19, had a couple of barns destroyed, Rock indicated. “The next biggest hit was in the Pines (subdivision),” he said. “As I drove through there, it smelled like a pine saw mill. There’s so much damage.” Utility companies are reporting continued progress on restoring power to their customers. NIPSCO reported as of 6 p.m. EST Monday, more than 90 percent of its affected customers have been restored and approximately 6,400 remained without power. That’s down from approximately 75,000 customers affected in NIPSCO’s service area. The majority of the remaining outages are expected to be restored by Wednesday night, with some outages in the hardest hit areas extending into Thursday. As repairs continue, NIPSCO will be able to provide more refined restoration times. For up-to-date information on NIPSCO outages, visit its website at nipsco.com/outagecenter or on a mobile phone at mnipsco.com Kosciusko REMC reported that by 4 p.m. Monday, only 350 members were still without power, mainly in the areas of Dewart Lake, Chapman Lake and just east of Silver Lake. Three additional crews arrived from Northeastern REMC, Columbia City; Whitewater Valley REMC, Liberty; and Boone REMC, Lebanon. With a dozen broken poles still to repair, crews kept working through the night. At 8:45 a.m. today, a press release from Kosciusko REMC reported its crews and the additional crews “worked through the night to restore power for the majority of members. There are roughly six members still without power, as KREMC Operations Department waits for broken transmission poles to be replaced by another utility.” KREMC crews will be working to clear debris from lines and rectify leaning poles over the next several days. If you do not have power, call the office at 574-267-6331 or 800-790-7362. “We would like to thank our members for their patience as we worked to restore power over the past two days,” said President and CEO Bruce Goslee. “A poster with messages from members calling in to say thank you or posting kind messages on our Facebook page was made for the guys to see as they came in from the field. I am really proud of our employees, they worked hard to get the lights back on and everyone stayed safe.” KREMC is a member-owned Touchstone Energy® electric cooperative serving more than 17,000 customers throughout Kosciusko County and into surrounding counties. AccuWeather.com reported tornadoes can occur in the Midwest during any month of the year. However, the number of tornadoes diminishes substantially during the cold-weather months. There is a secondary severe weather season that occurs during October and November, which favors the Deep South. While rare, tornadoes reaching as far north as the Midwest and mid-Atlantic are not unheard of during November.
