Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
The storm that swept through northeastern Indiana Sunday night grazed the northern half of Kosciusko County but caused little damage here while ravaging nearby Goshen.
A caller to the Kosciusko County Sheriff's Department reported a funnel cloud two miles south of Nappanee. The report was not confirmed, authorities said.
Sheriff Al Rovenstine characterized the storm as a typical stormy night in Indiana.
He said the funnel cloud was not confirmed and no tornadoes touched down in Kosciusko County. A tree was reported blown down on a house and two cars near Claypool and at least one driver ran off the road to miss fallen tree limbs.
Little damage was reported in the northern half of the county. Syracuse officials said a few limbs were reported blown down by the high winds, while Milford police received no calls reporting damage.
This morning everything is back to normal in Warsaw after a five-hour power outage as a result of the storm. According to the mayor's office, only about 10 trees were damaged by last night's high winds.
Just 25 miles north, Goshen provides a stark contrast to Warsaw's storm damage.
Officials with the city of Goshen said power will be out 12 to 36 hours, but already this morning power had been restored to the hospital and the jail.
In Goshen, high winds knocked trees into the roadway along Ind. 15, slowing traffic last night and this morning. Officials report traffic lights in the city were still not functioning this morning.
"Monetarily, I'd hate to estimate the damage, but on the human side we got through it with few injuries," said Chief Michael Kettlebar. He said the department had only two calls for injuries during the storm: chest pain and a seizure.
Goshen was lucky as far as injuries, according to Kettlebar, considering more than 100 trees were down on roads, cars or houses. Street department and park crews were working this morning to clear the streets and requested that traffic be kept to a minimum.
The storms cut power to about 19,600 Northern Indiana Public Service Co. customers across the northern third of Indiana. NIPSCO spokeswoman Karen Savinski said most of the outages were caused by lightning strikes and tree limbs falling onto power lines.
"The hardest hit area has been Goshen, with more than 4,000 customers without power," she said, adding that crews would work through the night to restore power.
There was one report of a tornado touchdown in LaGrange County on Sunday night, said Sally Pavlow, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Fort Wayne.
Ms. Pavlow said the report came from a police officer in a patrol car that was picked up by the tornado. LaGrange County Sheriff Deputy Terry Martin was shaken up and was hit by glass when his squad car was spun around as he was on his was to respond to a call.
The storms first struck in the Stone Lake area in northwest LaGrange County, where a home was heavily damaged. At least three barns were knocked down north and east of LaGrange. Another barn and two homes were flattened east of Mongo.
LaGrange County officials were asking people to stay of the roads following Sunday night's storms.
The National Weather Service also received unconfirmed reports of a tornado touchdown in Noble County around 10 p.m. EST Sunday. Local authorities reported damage, but could not confirm the touchdown.
Steve Eddy, a meteorologist with the weather service's Indianapolis bureau, said the severe storms that reportedly spawned the two tornadoes raked the northern counties with hurricane-force winds.
"We had 93 mile per hour winds in South Bend, and 78 mile per hour winds in Elkhart with these storms," Eddy said. "Those storms just whipped across that area and there's bound to be a lot of damage."
The State Emergency Management Agency received damage reports from Elkhart, LaPorte, Noble and DeKalb counties, said Dave Perkins, director of SEMA's emergency operations.
"We've had lots of trees down, power outages, barns and mobile homes damaged, but we won't know the full scope of what's happened until we can get some daylight up there," he said.
The severe storms developed along a cold front carrying cooler readings in the wake of Sunday's summer-like readings in the upper 70s and middle 80s.
