Memorial Day Weekend was dampened and darkened literally by thunderstorms which created power outages for thousands in the region.

The strong storms on Sunday night downed trees and power lines throughout southwest Indiana.

Many residents spent their Memorial Day cleaning up trees and limbs and debris from their property.

In Lawrence County, Illinois the National Weather Service confirmed an EF1 tornado which hit around 8:27 local time.

It’s peak winds were 105 miles per hour and it cut a path just under 7 miles long and 250 yards wide.  It produced damage to trees, in some cases snapping the trunks. A small outbuilding was destroyed near the intersection of N. 800th St. and E. 450th Ave., with some roof damage to a nearby home. Some minor damage also occurred near a home along N. 850th St.

Win-Energy REMC contract crews are still working today on restoring power to 2,000 members in Knox, Pike, Gibson, and Posey Counties.

In Indiana the storms causing the damage resulted from supercells that  formed across parts of the region between 6 and 9 PM. Meanwhile a line of storms developed to our west and moved quickly east-southeast across the entire area after 7 PM and hit our area around two hours later.

Widespread damaging winds of 60 to 70 mph occurred along with large hail up to tennis ball sized, and numerous tornadoes some radar indicated while others like the one in Lawrence County was confirmed.

The National Weather Service will have survey teams out in the field assessing the damage through the coming week.