By State › Indiana

Indiana: Overview

Download all of Indiana as PDF Print

Everything in the main manual and the skill guides applies in Indiana exactly as written. What’s different here is the specific hazard profile and the state, local, and legal context around it. This page is the starting point; the other three pages under Indiana go deeper on laws, local resources, and the data behind the risks named here.

The Palm Sunday Outbreak: the deadliest tornado event in Indiana history

On April 11, 1965, 10 tornadoes tore through Indiana in a matter of hours as part of a six-state outbreak, killing 137 people and injuring more than 1,200, the deadliest tornado outbreak in the state’s recorded history. The broader outbreak, 47 tornadoes across six states, ranks as the fourth deadliest in U.S. history and directly led to major improvements in severe weather warning systems nationwide. See the Risks page for the full data.

August 2026: a flood record that stood for 113 years, broken

In August 2026, a 1-in-1,000-year rainfall event, more than 11 inches in roughly 32 hours in parts of the state, sent the White River at Anderson to a crest of 24.9 feet, breaking the record set during the Great Flood of 1913. At least 7 people were confirmed dead, and the flooding arrived alongside a derecho that knocked out power to more than 1 million customers regionally. Because this event is recent, some figures may still be updating as recovery continues; the numbers on the Risks page reflect what was confirmed as of this writing.

What this means for how you use the rest of this manual

The manual’s Tier structure and the skill guides apply without modification. What’s different in Indiana: tornado season planning (a safe room, a weather radio, a practiced shelter plan) matters statewide given the Palm Sunday Outbreak’s scale, and households near the White River corridor or other flood-prone waterways should treat “it hasn’t flooded like that before” as no longer a reliable assumption, a century-old record fell in a single storm.

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