Path of the Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak
April 1964
From the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office Northern Indiana
Indiana and Michigan
At 4:35p.m., a squall line reached from near La Crosse, Wisconsin through Rockford to Champaign, Illinois.
SELS (Severe Local Storms) issued another tornado forecast. It was valid over the northern half of Indiana,
northwest Ohio, and southeast Michigan.
Done with its brief nap, the storm system woke up with renewed vigor shortly before 6pm. Massive
thunderstorms had erupted over northwest Indiana, and the first Hoosier tornado of the day crashed to earth. It
touched down in Starke County a few miles southwest of a hamlet known as, appropriately, Hamlet. It crossed
US Route 30 and tore directly across Koontz Lake. One hundred vacation cottages were severely damaged. As
one of the cottages was blown to pieces, the man inside was lifted into the air and thrown to his death 600 feet
away.
The people of La Paz and Lakeville had been very happy in recent weeks. Lakeville High School had grown
old, and was in need of repairs and modernization. Instead of fixing the old building, however, the two
communities decided to build a brand new high school for their students. Residents of the area often drove by
the construction site, and the progress of the new school was a common topic of conversation. It became even
more of a topic of conversation after April 11. The tornado that wreaked havoc at Koontz Lake was huge and
grey by the time it reached US Route 31 between La Paz and Lakeville. It completely flattened the high school.
Weeks of hard, backbreaking work were undone in a few seconds.
The people of Wyatt, Indiana, had been watching the southwest sky grow darker and darker. By the time it
finally changed its hue from black to green, they knew trouble was coming. They gathered their families, maybe
a flashlight or a few candles, and hurried into their basements and storm cellars in a state of controlled urgency.
The tornado that had just ripped down all of the new boards at Lakeville High School had been moving across
open country, and was hungry for another town. Wyatt was that town. The funnel swirled directly down Main
Street in Wyatt, and destroyed twenty homes. Wyatt’s already small population fell even further.
The South Bend weather office had issued a tornado warning for La Porte, Starke, and Marshall counties two
minutes before the Koontz Lake tornado touched down in central Starke County. The South Bend office had no
radar, nor a remote radar feed. They were relying on phone conversations with radar operators in Chicago.
At 6p.m., the South Bend office received reports of tornadoes near Grovertown on US Route 30 in northeast
Starke County, just north of Plymouth, and near Argos in southern Marshall County. The weather observer
issued a Tornado Warning for Saint Joseph, Marshall, Elkhart, and Kosciusko counties.
At a quarter after six, as the incomplete Lakeville High School was splintering apart, another tornado touched
down just fifteen miles to the east, near the Saint Joseph/Elkhart county line. It moved northeast to Wakarusa,
where it took the life of a child.
The AP wire had been going crazy at the Elkhart Truth. Many weather bulletins had printed out that afternoon,
and were collecting in a huge pile on the desk of Paul Huffman. Paul was sifting through the warnings when the
editor told him to grab his camera and go out to document the extreme conditions. Paul was out of the door in a
flash, and directed his car southeastward towards Goshen. Just before he left the newspaper, he learned from the
South Bend weather office that a tornado had been reported northwest of Nappanee and was moving northeast.
He knew that meant the tornado was heading for the northwest side of Goshen, so that’s where he positioned
himself. He sat in his car and waited.
As the sky grew blacker and blacker to his southwest, Paul wondered if he had underestimated what he had
gotten himself into. He nervously fidgeted with the camera in his lap as he stared out his car window. The rain
that had been falling began to mix with large hailstones that bounced madly on Paul’s car and made a terrifying
ding. Paul was shrinking back from the windshield in front of him when suddenly the hail and rain stopped. He
was about to breathe a sigh of relief, when instead he gasped for air. Just off to his left was what he had been
waiting for. It was a spinning mass of black cloud dragging itself along the earth. Bright sky was behind the
funnel, and with no precipitation falling, Paul knew he would be able to get some great shots.
Mr. Huffman lifted the camera to his eye and began snapping pictures as quickly as he could. The funnel was
moving to the right across his field of vision. As it approached the road about half a mile in front of him, it grew
to such a massive size that it took up much of the frame. The tornado, in the midst of crossing the highway,
decided to put on a spectacular show. Paul Huffman took one of the most celebrated tornado pictures of all-time
as the monster before him morphed into a spectacular double funnel. One massive tornado just a couple of
hundred feet behind another massive tornado, they charged northeast in tandem in front of Paul’s lens. As they
continued off to the right they combined into a chaotic mass of boiling, black cloud raking over Elkhart County.
The small community of Dunlap, made up primarily of mobile homes and modest houses, lay just southeast of
Elkhart on US Highway 33. The tornado Paul Huffman was photographing must have had some sort of vendetta
against sleepy Dunlap, for it was on the edge of town when the tornado developed its incredible double funnel
structure. The twins chewed through the southeast side of Dunlap, destroying eighty percent of the Midway
Trailer Court and killing ten people. It tossed planes around upside down in the air and ripped their wings off as
it skimmed by Goshen Airport. One of the airplane wings was later found near Centreville, Michigan, thirtyfive miles away from Goshen, and nearly twenty-five miles beyond the end of the tornado’s path!
At 6:25p.m.,one tornado had just finished destroying Lakeville High School in Saint Joseph County, a second
tornado had just killed a child in Wakarusa in Elkhart County, and a third tornado had just dropped to earth a
few miles south of Valparaiso in Porter County. This third tornado would go on to produce near-F4 damage to
homes southwest of Wanatah, and would destroy homes near Kingsford Heights, while the other two tornadoes
were simultaneously producing F4 damage in Wyatt and Dunlap.
Although he had no idea at the time, as Paul Huffman was watching the double funnel cross Route 33 in front of
him, another monstrous twister was spinning to the ground nine miles behind him near Millersburg. This new
tornado struck off to the northeast, devastating the Amish country-side of eastern Elkhart County and the
northwest half of Lagrange County. As the storm passed south of Shipshewana it flattened the quiet
communities of Shore and Rainbow Lake, doing near-F5 damage as it reduced large farm houses to nothing
more than a foundation.
The South Bend weather office issued several products during the day’s eighteenth hour describing the locations
of the tornadoes swarming through the area. Finally at 6:50p.m., the exasperated observer issued the following
statement:
Reports of tornadoes and funnel clouds have become so numerous that it is impossible to keep track of them.
Warnings should therefore exist throughout the central northern portion of Indiana. The problems have been
intensified by telephones being out in many areas and it is impossible to notify many people.
While the South Bend observer was sending that statement, an F4 tornado started satisfying its appetite in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, where it ruined the property and lives of many residents.
The unique intensity of the weather system in the Midwest that Palm Sunday was about to be demonstrated ten
minutes later as an unusual event began to take shape in the northwest corner of Steuben County, near the
community of Orland, Indiana. An intense tornado formed and quickly crossed the border into Michigan. It
struck the village of East Gilead squarely, and then continued on to destroy homes along the shore of Coldwater
Lake, filling the water with debris. When it reached the opposite shore of the lake, a second tornado formed just
five miles to the southwest near Kinderhook. The two tornadoes took off together in the same direction along
the same path, so that anybody hit by the first twister would get hit by the second one several minutes later. By
the time the first tornado passed south of Hillsdale, its friend was about thirty minutes behind it. The duo roared
across the countryside producing F4 damage in a swath over a mile wide.
In western Lenawee County, Michigan, about fifty people were attending Palm Sunday church services at the
Manitou Beach Baptist Church. When they arrived at church, rumors of tornadoes peppered the conversations
as the crowd gathered together outside the front doors of the building. At 7p.m., the service started, and the
congregation filed in. Faint thunder was heard stirring in the distance. As the service progressed, the thunder
became loud enough that it shook the church. The people began thinking more about the weather outside than
what they were hearing from the pulpit. The thunder developed into a low, steady rumble. The church-goers
noticed the rumble before they even realized it. They had been feeling the vibration in their feet before the
sound actually reached their ears and alerted them to the fact that something was happening behind them. As the
service was nearing its end, the rumbling sound that had been distracting the parishoners grew deafeningly loud.
The stained glass windows shattered. People began screaming in their surprise and terror. Plaster rained down
on them as mothers grabbed their children and everybody began pushing each other into the aisles. The
shrieking wind blew the church doors open, forcing the people inside to bend over to nearly a ninety degree
angle as they fought the wind, rain, hail, and debris in order to reach the stairs to the basement. Half of them
never made it. The church folded and collapsed upon them, burying over two dozen people in the rubble.
Forty minutes later the second tornado roared through, but there was nothing left for it to destroy, other than
some vacation cottages along the shore of Manitou Lake.
As the storm continued across Lenawee County, the twin tornadoes, combined with powerful downburst winds,
created a damage path up to four miles wide from one end of the county to the other. The wind recorder at
Tecumseh, in the northeast part of the county, recorded a wind gust of 151 mph when the south fringe of the
first tornado passed by. Fifty-five minutes later the second tornado hit the airport directly and gave a wind gust
of 75 mph. Ten minutes later, straight-line winds rushing into the backside of the thunderstorm gusted to 70
mph.
The horrific super-cell finally took its two destroyers back up into the cloud in northern Monroe County, just
west of Lake Erie and southwest of Detroit. The second, weaker tornado had fallen back to about an hour
behind the first one. Together they traveled ninety miles, killed forty-four people, and injured 612.
Of the counties that these tornadoes hit, only Hillsdale was warned. The Lansing weather office thought the
storm would move to the northeast rather than the east, and as a result they warned for the counties to the north
of the eventual track. The Lansing office had good reason to forecast a northeast movement, since every other
tornado in the border area that day had indeed moved in a northeast direction; as was this pair of tornadoes,
until it reached central Hillsdale County and made a turn to the right.
As the Manitou Beach Tornado was just crossing the Michigan/Indiana line, hail two inches in diameter -- about
the size of a hen’s egg -- was battering Lafayette, Indiana. Another tornado formed a few miles southwest of the
city. This tornado passed through mostly rural country, although it did produce F4 damage in northwest Clinton
County between Cambria and Moran. This tornado was significant in that it did not form in the same area as the
previous tornadoes in Michiana. It developed in a whole new super-cell. A super-cell that would grow, evolve,
and become one of a new front of storms that would rake across central Indiana about a hundred miles south of
the storms in the Michigan/Indiana border area.
Three minutes after the tornado began near Lafayette, the most powerful tornado ever to hit northern Indiana
struck ground. It began several miles south of South Bend and set off to the northeast, heading directly
for...Dunlap.
Paul Hoffman’s tornadoes crushed the Midway Trailer Court around 6:30p.m. As the storm continued on
beyond the town, the residents cautiously crept out from their damaged homes to survey the destruction and to
assist their injured neighbors. Rescue crews arrived almost immediately from Elkhart and Goshen to tend to the
hurt. A constant stream of ambulances, fire trucks, hearses, and volunteer’s cars filled the highway as they
shuttled people to hospitals. The tornado had hit, and the people of the area had paid a terrible price to it, but at
least it was done. The storm had moved on, and once you’re hit by a tornado it’s supposed to be over. After the
tornado, the weather is supposed to calm down. So when the southwest sky began to fill with lightning before
many of the tornado victims had even been found yet, the crowds at Dunlap groaned. They groaned not because
they feared another tornado, but because they didn’t want to get rained on. But rain it did. The rain slashed
down on rescuers and victims alike, chilling people to the bone and stinging their faces. Soon the rain began
falling nearly sideways as the wind increased. At half past seven, the people in the unassuming community of
Dunlap had their worst fears realized again. A tornado even more powerful than the first one ripped into town.
It leveled houses to the ground. It destroyed the Sunnyside and Kingston Heights subdivisions. Anything left
standing after the first tornado was not only leveled, but swept clean from the surface of the earth.
Its need of destruction not yet satiated, the twister moved on and destroyed a truck stop at the corner of routes
20 and 15 where it took six more lives. The horror finally lifted back into the sky in the northwest corner of
Lagrange County near Stone Lake. With this tornado, the storms along the state line had finally blown
themselves out, and would produce no further major tornadoes.
It was not a good day for the poor observer at the South Bend weather office. At 7:13p.m ., he issued this
statement:
Broadcasting stations are urged to ask people to not call the Weather Bureau unless they have weather to
report. We have had numerous poor joke calls and they tie up the lines.
At the time that statement was issued, three different areas of storms were producing tornadoes: one in central
Michigan, one along the Indiana/Michigan border, and one in central Indiana.
The people of Crawfordsville had been watching the sky that evening with great apprehension. Fathers were
pointing to the sky and telling their sons how to read the clouds. At twenty after seven a twister came to the
ground on the southeast side of town, sending everybody rushing inside to safety. The tornado spared
Crawfordsville, but had different plans for many other locations in Montgomery, Boone, and Hamilton counties.
It produced F4 damage near Smartsdale as it leveled a home to its foundation, killing a person inside. The
funnel grew to a mile in width as it moved northwest of Lebanon, and it destroyed over four dozen homes and
killed eleven people, six of whom were from the same family. Two cars were thrown a hundred yards from the
roadway resulting in four more deaths. The death and destruction then continued into the Arcadia area, fortyfive miles east of Crawfordsville.
The news media had been making the Crystal Lake and Dunlap tornadoes famous that evening. At 7:30p.m.,
when the second Dunlap tornado was crushing that town, another tornado was touching down near the
Howard/Clinton County line, and would become just as well-known. Within seconds of reaching ground it blew
into a community of nine hundred souls known as Russiaville. When it was done tearing up the town, ninety
percent of its buildings had been damaged or destroyed. A few miles further along, the tornado became a milewide wedge that devastated a hundred homes in Alto, where the Maple Crest Apartments lost their entire second
floor. The tornado continued to strengthen, and reached F4 intensity as it pummeled Greentown where eighty
homes were destroyed and ten people killed. Debris from Greentown was spread out across the Indiana
landscape.
The tornado continued to the east, paralleling the Norfolk and Southern Railroad. Fortunately the tornado was
just far enough south so that it missed the towns that were strung out along the tracks.
The people in the VA Hospital in Marion had heard that a tornado was charging through Grant County, though
they didn’t know for sure if it was going to hit Marion or not. They soon got their answer when the roof of the
hospital was ripped off. Then the Panorama Shopping Center was blown down, and almost immediately was
converged upon by looters. Thirty-one electric company transmission towers were toppled. An astounding 835
people had been injured by this tornado, 600 of them in Howard County. Twenty-five were killed.
The funnel lifted near Arcana. As the funnel lifted, the weather office at Fort Wayne issued a Tornado Warning
for the counties of Grant, Blackford, Jay, southern Wabash, Huntington, Wells, and Adams. The parent
thunderstorm proceeded on to the east, and after only about ten minutes decided to put down another tornado,
along the same path.
The tornado steamed across farmland near Roll, and then struck Keystone with F4 strength, killing two people.
It continued to the northeast and hit Linn Grove, causing two more fatalities. As it hit Linn Grove, the weather
office in Fort Wayne issued the following statement:
The Weather Bureau radar at Baer Field shows a strong hook echo about five miles west of Berne Indiana and
moving eastward. Residents in the Berne area should take immediate precautions for personal safety for a
strong possibility of a tornado in the next 30 to 60 minutes.
In reality, the tornado skimmed the north side of Berne about six minutes after that statement was sent out. The
Fort Wayne office had no idea that an F4 tornado had already been on the ground for twenty-five miles in Grant
County, and for thirty-five miles before it finally reached Berne. Twenty-nine people had died and nearly nine
hundred were injured when the Fort Wayne office sent out that message.
The twister set its sights on Ohio, and moved into the Buckeye State south of Willshire. Five homes were
leveled flat to the ground, and a mother and her son were killed. The tornado then lifted. As the tornado
dissipated, the Fort Wayne weather office sent this product:
The Weather Bureau radar at Baer Field shows the strong hook echo now just a mile or two south of Van Wert
and weakening in intensity. Hold the line a minute for a definite report on tornado at Berne. The tornado
touched down at Berne three miles west and one mile northeast. Several houses destroyed and ambulances are
rushing to scene. Tornado hit between ten and fifteen minutes ago which would be between 8:50 and 8:55 PM
EST.
In the days following the Marion and Linn Grove tornadoes, several witnesses would report having seen two
tornadoes in tandem push through the area. The known existence of twin tornadoes at Dunlap and from
Hillsdale to Monroe County Michigan lend credence to these reports.
While the weather was wreaking havoc in central Indiana, the storms in central Michigan continued to produce
tornadoes. The Michigan tornadoes were weaker; mostly doing F2 damage. However they were still quite
widespread and resulted in fifty-three fatalities that evening. Before 9p.m. Lansing, Michigan reported 63mph
winds with 3/4-inch hail. Several minutes later, half-inch hail fell on Ypsilanti and Detroit. Detroit Metropolitan
Airport received an inch of rain in thirty minutes.
At 9:20p.m., the Fort Wayne office issued the following unfortunate statement:
Attention WOMO Please use emergency action notification signal. Marion Indiana reported through Fort
Wayne signal department at 9:07 PM EST that three tornadoes had struck the city of Marion with extensive
damage. The Veterans Administration Hospital was one area hit. Request for ambulance assistance has been
requested from Muncie and Anderson. The Fort Wayne Weather Bureau places these counties under alert for
eastward movement that struck Marion. These counties are Wells Adams Blackford and Jay Counties. Residents
in these counties should remain on the alert for the next 60 minutes.
The tornadoes Fort Wayne was warning for had actually hit Marion a full hour and twenty minutes earlier.
Apparently the Fort Wayne weather observer thought that the report he received from Marion was saying that
the tornadoes had just occurred. The Fort Wayne observer then sent a message to the Columbus Ohio weather
office stating that a tornado had hit Marion at 9:07p.m., and the Columbus weather office then issued its own
statement with that same erroneous information. In reality the storm had hit Marion around 8p.m. At the time
of Fort Wayne’s warning, the line of storms on radar was well east of Marion, extending from Paulding and Van
Wert counties into Adams and Jay counties.
At 9:30p.m., the Fort Wayne office lost power, and was out of service for an hour. By the time the office got its
electricity back the storms were well east into Ohio.