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11 April 1965
The deadliest tornado outbreak in Indiana's history — 137 Hoosiers killed — touched St. Joseph County with one long track: Late on Palm Sunday, 11 April 1965, an F3 tornado ran from northeast of Knox to south of South Bend across Starke, Marshall, St. Joseph and Elkhart counties — 35.6 miles on the ground in the Weather Service's survey. Its killing ground was Koontz Lake in Starke County, where thirty cottages were destroyed and seventy damaged and ten people died; twenty-six homes, a church and a high school were destroyed along the track, and the Service's table counts 82 injured. In this county the tornado tore through the southern townships — the Service names severe damage near La Paz and in the town of Wyatt — and its deaths stand in Starke County's column, not this one's: the distinction is the record's, and this section keeps it. The outbreak's catastrophe proper lay one county east, where twin F4s destroyed Dunlap's Midway trailer park and Sunnyside addition in Elkhart County — Elkhart County's story, boundary-printed here because the second of those tornadoes formed near the St. Joseph–Elkhart county line before tracking away. For northern Indiana the day remains the benchmark: the first time in the Weather Bureau's history that all nine counties of the northern Indiana office stood under a tornado warning at once.
Sources:
- National Weather Service, Northern Indiana, "April 11th 1965 Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak" — the F3 track (NE of Knox to S of South Bend; Starke, Marshall, St. Joseph, Elkhart), its 35.6 miles, 10 deaths and 82 injured, the Koontz Lake, La Paz and Wyatt damage, and the outbreak's 261 deaths across the Midwest; the blanket tornado warning.