The Weather Record and the Crest

1965 · 1978 · the creek-gauge test run November 2026

What already stands: Two of the weather set's four elements are banked whole in the Stories file and are cross-referenced here, not retold: the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 11 April 1965, mapped not-here — the outbreak's tracks crossed the county but not this ground — and the Blizzard of 1978, carried at National Weather Service record strength. The single-tornado and outbreak pair rides with those accounts. What no fragment carried, in Wars or anywhere else, is the set's first element: the record crest of this ground's own water.

The crest test: The checklist asks for the river's record crest, and this ground's rivers are creeks — Juday Creek running through the CDP's subdivisions and golf course, Willow Creek on its edge, and the ditch system, Sheffield Creek among it, that the county drainage board maintains. The test was run against the United States Geological Survey's gauge record, the settler the register names first. It returns a clean negative: no streamgage and no crest record for Juday Creek or for Willow Creek stands in the USGS record reached — neither watercourse has ever carried a gauge in the record this section could reach, so no settled record crest exists to print. A crest figure for these creeks quoted from any source would be an invention, and none is printed.

What the water record does hold:Flood memory on this ground lives in farm and subdivision recollection, not in instruments; the county's gauged crests belong to the St. Joseph River at its city gauges — South Bend's and Mishawaka's numbers, boundary material that is not this ground's to claim.

The settler, named: A crest for Juday or Willow Creek can be settled only from records that were never instrumented into the national file: the St. Joseph County Drainage Board's own records and any high-water marks the county surveyor holds for the ditch system. Until those are read, the crest element closes as a tested negative — the search ran whole against the gauge record, and the record is not there.

Sources:

1. United States Geological Survey streamgage record, searched November 2026 — no streamgage or crest record found for Juday Creek or Willow Creek, St. Joseph County, Indiana.
2. Famous Stories & the Record (banked) — the Palm Sunday outbreak of 11 April 1965 mapped not-here, and the Blizzard of 1978 at National Weather Service record strength; cross-referenced, not retold.
3. Joseph County Drainage Board dewatering order of 2 November 2026.
4. Settler named for any future crest figure: St. Joseph County Drainage Board records and county surveyor high-water marks for the Juday Creek / Willow Creek ditch system.