Palm Sunday · the evening the tornadoes crossed the county

11 APRIL 1965

The city of South Bend was not struck on Palm Sunday 1965; its county was a corridor: The outbreak of 11 April 1965 was Indiana's deadliest tornado day — 137 people killed in the state, among more than 260 killed across six states (the Weather Service's outbreak page gives 261 deaths in all; anniversary accounts give 271, and the conflict is printed as found). Three tornadoes crossed St. Joseph County that evening, and their courses, exactly, are the event. The first touched down northeast of Knox in Starke County late in the afternoon and ran 35.6 miles to south of South Bend: it wrecked the Koontz Lake shore (30 cottages destroyed, 70 damaged), crossed U.S. 31 between La Paz and Lakeville destroying a high school, and tore through Wyatt, in the county's south, where some twenty homes were destroyed. The Weather Service's confirmed-tornado table counts 10 deaths and 82 injured on its path and rates it F3; the storm-survey literature rates the same tornado F4 — the ratings are printed as their sources give them, not reconciled.

The second and third tornadoes did their killing over the county line, and the boundary is part of the record: The second formed about 6:15 p.m. near Wakarusa — the anniversary accounts place the touchdown in St. Joseph County, where a child was killed; the Weather Service's table files the tornado under Elkhart County — and ran 21 miles northeast, destroying the Midway Trailer Court at Dunlap, where 80 of its 100 units were wrecked; it killed 14 and injured some 200. The third, the double-funnel storm, touched down about 7:10 p.m. in St. Joseph County south of South Bend and ran 37 miles to northeast of Shipshewana: it destroyed the Sunnyside subdivision and devastated Kingston Heights, both in Elkhart County, killed six people at a demolished truck stop, and killed 36 in all, with 320 injured; it was first rated F5 and stands in the table as F4. Inside St. Joseph County, the day's deaths were at Wyatt and at the Wakarusa touchdown. The subdivisions whose names the day is remembered by are Elkhart County's, and this record prints them as such.

The city's part was its weather office's night: The South Bend Weather Bureau office issued a tornado warning two minutes before the Koontz Lake strike; at 6:00 p.m. it warned St. Joseph, Marshall, Elkhart and Kosciusko counties; and at 6:50 p.m., with reports arriving faster than they could be tracked, it put out the blanket statement that warnings should be considered in effect throughout central northern Indiana — the anniversary account of the office's night states that it was the first time in Weather Bureau history that all nine counties of an office's jurisdiction stood under a tornado warning at once. The outbreak's aftermath remade American storm warning — the Weather Service's own page calls the day a watershed, and the storm-survey recommendations that followed it became national practice. South Bend's dead were country people at the county's edge; its hospitals, its newspaper and its weather office worked the region's worst night. That is the size of the city's Palm Sunday, and it is printed at that size.

Sources:

1. National Weather Service, Northern Indiana (IWX), "April 11th 1965 Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak" — the confirmed-tornado table: the F3 from northeast of Knox to south of South Bend (35.6 miles, 10 deaths, 82 injured, Koontz Lake's cottages, the destroyed high school, severe damage near La Paz and at Wyatt); the F4 from west of Wakarusa to northwest of Middlebury filed under Elkhart County (21.2 miles, 14 deaths, Midway Trailer Park destroyed); the F4 from southeast of South Bend to northeast of Shipshewana (37 miles, 36 deaths, Sunnyside destroyed, Kingston Heights devastated, six killed at the truck stop, initially rated F5); the outbreak's 47 tornadoes and 261 deaths, and the day as a watershed for storm-survey practice.
2. Fujita, Bradbury and Van Thullenar, "Palm Sunday Tornadoes of April 11, 1965," Monthly Weather Review 98 (1970), as summarized in Keith Heidorn's survey account — the first tornado rated F4, the second's 6:15 p.m. formation near Wakarusa, the third's 7:10 p.m. touchdown south of South Bend, and the day's Indiana toll of 137.
3. WSBT, fiftieth-anniversary account of the outbreak (2015) — the 20 homes destroyed at Wyatt, the child killed at the Wakarusa touchdown in St. Joseph County, the 200 injured on the second tornado's path, the 320 injured on the third's, the 271 killed across six states, and the South Bend Weather Bureau office's night: the warning two minutes before Koontz Lake, the 6:00 p.m. four-county warning, the 6:50 p.m. blanket statement, and the nine counties under warning at once.