June can be a busy month for severe weather around here, and climatology speaking, produces the highest probability for severe storms than any other month. In the past 20 years we have seen it all from record setting flash floods to tornado outbreaks to strong wind damage events.
The biggest weather event of note was the biggest single day tornado outbreak in Indiana history – June 2, 1990. Everyone talks about 1974, but the 1990 event seems to be overlooked. This event produced 37 tornadoes across the state all in one day!! 8 people died (6 of those in Petersburg in southwest Indiana), making the deadliest tornado outbreak since April 3, 1974. Here is a map showing the tornado tracks across central and southern Indiana that day. FIVE F-4’s touched down in Southern Indiana. By today’s new tornado classification, they would be rated EF-5’s, with wind gusts up to 260mph!!!! One of the F-4 twisters stayed on the ground for 106 miles.
Footage of F-4 tornado near Loogootee, IN (photographer unknown):
Video of the F-4 tornado as it took shape near Newton, IL:
The town of Petersburg, IN was devastated by this tornado, and there is a memorial there to commemorate that day.
Here is a picture courtesy of the NWS of an F-4 tornado in Pike county. It is unclear whether this was the actual Petersburg tornado or the one that tracked just north of there (which was also an F-4).
Radars looked a LOT different back then. 🙂 Here is the June 2, 1990 doppler radar out of Cincinnati, OH:
June 7, 2008 Flash Flood/Stormy June 2008:
June 2008 started out very stormy, following a wetter than normal May. A frontal boundary stalled out over the area June 6-7th, and produced tremendous rains of 5-10″+ in a matter of 6-10 hours that would send area rivers in record territory. As a 13 year old weather geek, I remember watching the radar with storms (one after the other) training over the same location, which happened to be right over my house. This happened all night and all morning, (prolific lightning too), then finally ceased during the afternoon of the 7th. The next day hit 90º with heat indices near 105º. Here is a look at rainfall totals from this event, focused across south-central Indiana. Notice the area from Franklin to Martinsville to Terre Haute at 10″ of rain.
Looking at a wider picture of rain totals from June 6-7, you can see how it was a rather narrow zone where the excessive rains fell.
Here are rainfall totals observed during the first week of June in 2008….note the area of 10″+!
The pattern featured a ridge of high pressure situated over the southeast U.S., and a trough over the Northwest states. This is a pattern that has played out many times in 2019 and has led to the very wet year for many. Here is a look at the 500mb pattern during the first half of June 2008:
Here is a look at precipitation from normal during June 1-14, 2008. Much of the Midwest dealt with significant flooding.
Nearly the entire town of Martinsville, IN was covered in flood waters. This was a city hit particularly hard. Living in Martinsville at the time, I will never forget it. It was truly unbelievable, and no event has come even remotely close since then. Here are a few photos from Herald Times in Martinsville, highway 37.
Even areas of far southwest Indiana that saw no rain ended up with significant flooding along river basins, particularly from the White River as water upstream flowed down. Here is a look at the White River in Petersburg several days after the big rains – a full 90 miles away from where the heavy rains fell.
We would love to hear your story from these major weather events discussed above, and how you were impacted.
Need reliable weather info throughout the summer season? Inquire at bamwx.com/contact-us or [email protected] to get more info on what our personable weather subscriptions can provide you daily!
Why would I pay for a weather service when I can get free weather on my phone? Relying on free weather information such as free, automated weather apps is not practical if you want to run a successful business. They are solely based on raw computer model output with zero human element. These free apps also have a tendency to send you erroneous alerts about rain or snow coming, even when there isn’t a cloud in the sky! I can’t count with my own fingers how many times I get incorrect snow/rain alerts to my phone. I have more examples than this picture below, but I think you get the point.
What our service can provide you:
24/7 on-call meteorologist support: This is the HUGE benefit of our service!! Having your own personal meteorologists to contact 24/7 is key for sound business decisions whether it’s 3pm or 3am. We alway have a meteorologist on duty to get in immediate touch with! We truly enjoy communicating with our clients whether it’s a high-risk weather event or sunny and 75! We can assist you in every weather situation Mother Nature can bring us. The goal of this is to make your job easier! Stop stressing over a thunderstorm popping up on radar during your event. Have us on-call to tell you what to expect throughout the event.
Accuracy: We HAVE to do our very best to get every detail in a forecast correct. Every member of our team has a keen knowledge of weather patterns in the Ohio Valley. Each storm presents its own challenges. We strive to get every detail in a forecast correct from snow and ice accumulations down to freezing drizzle and fog, and of course, severe storms. We wouldn’t have a business if we didn’t hold ourselves accountable for getting the forecast correct. Knowing the fine-details in the forecast can be the difference between making $5000 or losing $5000. The time has come to quit guessing which local television/radio/app forecast is correct and waiting to check the latest local television forecast. This can take too much time and cause frustration. Think of it this way, it would be wiser to spend $1500 now on a weather service like ours than to lose $50,000 later because you were trying to guess the outcome.
We can also set-up a Thor Guard lightning prediction system at your event. This is better than most systems as this predicts conditions favorable for a lightning strike to alert you ahead of time, instead of other systems that alert you for a lightning strike that has already occurred.
You can inquire at bamwx.com/contact-us or [email protected].
Our commercial personal subscription will get you a daily, detailed local weather forecast (available anywhere in the central/northern Plains to the Ohio Valley), and a long-range forecast. Monthly outlooks out to 6 months always available, and long-range forecasts are updated daily with forecasts based on research and not just pure models. This + the on-call option gives you an amazing package of information and your own personal meteorologist which means you always know what to expect. It’s so much better than any weather packages you have seen before!
For weather enthusiasts who are just looking for updates during active weather, we also offer a $50 per year Midwest Extreme Weather subscription to keep you updated during active weather in the Midwest!!
