The National Weather Service in Indianapolis has confirmed that a tornado did touch down south of Riley in Vigo County, Indiana, on Wednesday evening, November 11 — rating it EF0 with peak winds of 85 miles per hour after a damage survey released at 1:16 p.m. EST on Thursday, November 12. The confirmation turns Wednesday's radar-indicated warning into a verified tornado, and it closes the open question left by the severe storms that swept Indiana under Severe Thunderstorm Watch 704, which this newsroom reported as the watch was issued on Wednesday.
Source: National Weather Service Indianapolis
According to the survey, the tornado began at 5:27 p.m. EST on November 11, about two miles south-southwest of Riley, and ended two minutes later at 5:29 p.m., about two miles south of Riley. Surveyors, working from storm-chaser video, found that the circulation was on the ground west of Singhurst Street before it crossed the street, partially destroyed a barn and pushed an RV off its foundation. The tornado then continued through tree groves without causing further damage, and chaser footage showed the circulation still in contact with the ground as far east as State Road 159.
Source: National Weather Service Indianapolis
From warning to confirmation
The tornado was born inside a fast-moving line of severe thunderstorms that crossed Indiana on Wednesday afternoon and evening. The Storm Prediction Center issued Severe Thunderstorm Watch 704 at 4:45 p.m. EST, and the weather service placed 43 Indiana counties — including Marion, Hamilton, Hendricks and Johnson counties in the Indianapolis metro — under the watch until 11 p.m. At about 5:26–5:27 p.m., the weather service issued a tornado warning for southeastern Vigo County and west-central Clay County, including Riley, Cory, Clay City and Saline City, after radar indicated rotation in the storm about eight miles southeast of Terre Haute, the county seat. The tornado's confirmed start time, 5:27 p.m., matches the warning almost to the minute.
Source: Indiana Public Media
WISH-TV in Indianapolis reported that a trained storm spotter told the weather service the storm damaged the roofs of at least three homes and tossed a grain bin into nearby trees near the intersection of State Road 159 and East Dallas Drive, about a mile south of Riley and roughly a 20-minute drive southeast of downtown Terre Haute. Hail the size of golf balls — measured at 1.75 inches — was reported in Riley, and severe thunderstorm warnings during the event carried possible 60 mph wind gusts. No injuries were reported anywhere in the storm, a point the weather service's survey figures confirm: zero fatalities and zero injuries.
Source: WISH-TV via EIN Presswire Indiana Newswire
A record tornado year for Indiana
WISH-TV reported that, if confirmed, the Riley storm would be Indiana's 89th tornado of 2026 — surpassing the state's previous record of 72 tornadoes, set in 2011. Thursday's survey makes that confirmation official, subject only to the weather service's standard note that survey information is preliminary and can be revised in the final Storm Data publication. The same stretch of road south of Riley was hit by an EF1 tornado on June 17, 2026, which makes this week's EF0 the second tornado to strike the immediate area in five months.
Source: WISH-TV reporting summarized by Zest
On the Enhanced Fujita scale, an EF0 tornado carries winds of 65 to 85 mph — enough to damage roofs, siding, barns and light structures and to push an unanchored RV off its foundation, exactly the damage pattern surveyors found near Riley. EF1 begins at 86 mph. The Riley tornado sat at the very top of the EF0 band.
Weather whiplash: from 70 degrees to a freeze watch
The storms rode in on a sharp cold front. Indianapolis reached about 70 degrees on Wednesday before the front crossed; by Thursday the state was raw, windy and much colder, with the heaviest rain — up to an inch — falling near Terre Haute. The same weather pattern now brings the next hazard in the opposite direction: the weather service has a winter weather advisory for lake-effect snow in Lake County, in Indiana's northwest corner, from midnight Thursday night to 10 a.m. CST Friday, with accumulating wet snow and localized totals of three inches or more possible away from the Lake Michigan shoreline, and slippery conditions expected on bridges and overpasses for the Friday morning commute.
Source: National Weather Service advisories via Indiana's Weather Daily
For drivers — including the many truckers who run Interstate 70 through Terre Haute and the Indianapolis metro — the sequence matters: Wednesday's storm line has cleared, but the hazard flips to freeze and lake-effect snow in the state's northwest within about a day. Homeowners near Riley, meanwhile, are being urged in local coverage to check roofs and outbuildings for hidden wind and hail damage from the 1.75-inch hail, even where the tornado itself did not pass.
What happens next
The weather service's survey findings are preliminary and will be published in final form in Storm Data. No further survey of the Riley damage was announced on Thursday. The confirmed tornado does not change the storm's human outcome — nobody was hurt — but it does enter the official record as Indiana's 89th tornado of a record-setting year, and it gives Vigo County residents a verified account of what crossed Singhurst Street and State Road 159 in those two minutes on Wednesday evening.