Crystal Lake–Burtons Bridge, Illinois This devastating tornado was first detected at 3:27 p.m. CDT (21:27 UTC), but officially touched down seven minutes earlier, in Lakewood. At that time the tornado first produced visible damage at the Crystal Lake Country Club; two
firs on the
golf course were prostrated. Initially narrow, the tornado subsequently and rapidly widened to . Crossing Nash Street and McHenry Avenue in
Crystal Lake, the tornado unroofed or severely damaged several houses. Alongside
U.S. Route 14 the tornado claimed its first fatality, a man in a barn. Nearby gas stations and a
strip mall were damaged. At the latter place, a roof sheltering a
Piggly Wiggly and a
Neisner's collapsed, trapping 20 or more people below. The tornado tossed cars about in the parking lot as well. Shortly afterward, the tornado struck the Colby subdivision, destroying or severely damaging 155 homes. F4-level damage occurred as several homes were completely swept off their foundations. Four deaths occurred in the neighborhood, including three in one family (the Holter family) whose home was obliterated. Their bodies were located two blocks distant and a
pickup truck was found to have landed in the basement. The tornado scattered debris from the Colby subdivision up to a away. After ravaging the Colby neighborhood, the tornado destroyed several warehouses and shattered windows. A diesel plant, a wallpaper factory, and a manufacturer sustained damage ranging from light to heavy. The tornado then extensively damaged the Orchard Acres subdivision, crossed
Illinois Route 31, and apparently weakened before impacting farmland. A few barns and isolated trees were damaged. The tornado may have dissipated and reformed as a new tornado near the
Fox River. The tornado also struck the community of
Burtons Bridge. The tornado, now wide, then restrengthened and felled mature oak trees as it crested a precipitous hill before striking Bay View Beach. There the tornado badly damaged several homes and downed
willow trees. Finally, the tornado intersected
Illinois Route 176 and produced its final swath of significant damage in Island Lake. In Island Lake the tornado tossed boats ashore, wrecked piers, and caused homes to collapse, resulting in one additional death. The tornado also displaced several homes from their foundations. The tornado neared
U.S. Route 12 as it dissipated at 3:42 p.m. CST (21:42 UTC). Damage estimates were set at about $1.5 million.
Wakarusa–Midway–Middlebury, Indiana This was the most famous and well-publicized of the Palm Sunday tornadoes, often remembered as the first of two F4 tornadoes to hit the Dunlap (Elkhart)–Goshen area. It formed near the
St. Joseph–
Elkhart County border and tracked northeastward, striking Wakarusa, where it caused severe damage and killed a child. The tornado then intensified significantly as it moved toward northern
Goshen and the Midway Trailer Court. As it neared the trailer park,
Elkhart Truth reporter Paul Huffman, then reporting on severe weather, overheard a report of a tornado approaching his position on
U.S. Route 33, about south of Midway. As Huffman and his wife Betty awaited the storm, he noticed the tornado approaching from the southwest, so he began taking a series of photographs, six in all. The photographs captured the evolution of the storm into twin funnels as it struck the trailer park, with each funnel gyrating around a central point yet only producing one damage swath. The tornado struck the trailer park at 6:32 p.m. CDT (23:32 UTC). (Roughly 45 minutes later, another F4 tornado passed just to the north of the Midway Trailer Court, splitting into yet another pair of funnels as it struck the Sunnyside neighborhood in
Dunlap.) The tornado obliterated roughly 80% of the trailer park, with 10 deaths, and caused F4 damage to numerous other homes near Middlebury, some of which were swept clean. Three more people died in the Middlebury area before the tornado ended. Unofficial estimates of the death toll vary, with Grazulis listing 14 deaths instead of the 31 appearing in the official
National Climatic Data Center/
National Centers for Environmental Information (NCDC/NCEI) database. An
airplane wing from
Goshen Airport was found away in
Centreville, Michigan.
Orland, Indiana/Coldwater Lake–southern Hillsdale–Manitou Beach–Devils Lake–southern Tecumseh, Michigan (two tornadoes) With the telephone lines down, emergency services in
Elkhart County, Indiana, could not warn
Michigan residents that the tornadoes were headed their way. From the
Detroit Metropolitan Airport, the radar operator at the
U.S. Weather Bureau Office (WBO) observed that the thunderstorms over Northern Indiana and western Lower Michigan were moving east-northeastward at . Of the southernmost counties of Michigan, all but three—
Berrien,
Cass, and
St. Joseph—were hit. Starting just south of the Indiana-Michigan state line, near
Orland, the first, deadliest, and strongest of two massive tornadoes, each rated F4, debarked trees and leveled homes on the shoreline of Lake Pleasant in Steuben County. Crossing into Branch County, Michigan, the tornado damaged more homes in
East Gilead. The tornado was up to wide as it obliterated homes on
Coldwater Lake; 18 deaths occurred there. Debris from the empty foundations was strewn over the surface of the lake and deposited in a small cove. The tornado destroyed 200 homes and caused one additional death as it traversed Branch County. After striking Coldwater Lake, the tornado widened even further, up to across, destroying a century-old farmhouse and killing a family of six near
Reading. The tornado then narrowed back to as it struck
Baw Beese Lake, near the southern edge of
Hillsdale. The tornado hurled a
New York Central Railroad freight train into Baw Beese Lake. Across Hillsdale County the tornado killed 11 or more people and destroyed 177 homes. Entering
Lenawee County, the tornado traversed the
Irish Hills and approached
Manitou Beach–Devils Lake. As it struck Manitou Beach–Devils Lake, the tornado destroyed the Manitou Beach Baptist Church; of the 50 people then in attendance for
Palm Sunday services, 26 failed to reach shelter in time and were stranded beneath debris for up to two hours. Eight fatalities occurred in the church. The local dance pavilion on Devils Lake was demolished, having recently been rebuilt after a fire on Labor Day in 1963. One of the tornadoes damaged parts of
Onsted; in the nearby village of
Tipton, which suffered a direct hit, 94% of the town's buildings were damaged or destroyed. Across Lenawee County the tornado destroyed 189 homes. About 30 minutes later, the Manitou Beach–Devils Lake area in Lenawee County was hit by the second of the two tornadoes, causing numerous fatalities, including a family of six in eastern Lenawee County who had survived the first tornado. Many homes were hit twice. One or both F4 tornadoes struck the
then-Village of Milan, south of
Ann Arbor. The Wolverine Plastics building on the Monroe County side of town, then the top employer in the village, was destroyed with the roof being completely removed in the process. The Milan Junior High School was seriously damaged along with the adjacent, senior high school, disused since 1958, at Hurd and North streets, on the Washtenaw County side of Milan. Milan became a city in 1967; opened a new Middle School in 1969, which replaced the old Junior High School; and eventually demolished the 1900 building that housed the former junior and senior high schools. The first of the F4 tornadoes produced a wind gust at
Tecumseh—the highest wind measurement in a tornado until a measurement of near
Red Rock, Oklahoma, on
April 26, 1991; a higher measurement of —later corrected to —in the
F5 tornado of
May 3, 1999, broke this record. Damage from the two tornadoes was difficult to separate and covered more than across, including much
downburst and
microburst destruction. Total damage estimates from the two tornadoes were $32 million with more than 550 homes, a church, and 100 cottages destroyed.
Dunlap, Indiana This was the second and deadliest of two violent tornadoes to strike the Elkhart–Goshen area, with the highest single-tornado death toll in the outbreak. It hit Dunlap about an hour after another F4 tornado hit the Midway trailer park a short distance to the southeast. Few people received warning due to the passage of the earlier storm, which disrupted communications and downed power lines, thereby affecting rescue efforts after the earlier tornado as well. The Dunlap tornado first produced tree damage beginning just west of
State Road 331. Prior to crossing the St. Joseph–Elkhart county line, the tornado claimed its first two fatalities. As the tornado neared Dunlap, it intensified into an extremely violent tornado. It then devastated the Sunnyside Housing addition and the unoccupied Sunnyside Mennonite Church. The Sunnyside subdivision was completely destroyed, with many homes swept away. The Kingston Heights subdivision was similarly devastated. The death toll from the two subdivisions was 28 people, with another six killed in a home and truck stop at the junction of
State Road 15 and
U.S. Route 20. The Palm Sunday Tornado Memorial Park now exists near this location, at the corner of County Road 45 and Cole Street in Dunlap (). After striking Dunlap, the tornado apparently weakened somewhat, but still generated extensive damage eastward to Hunter Lake. Shortly before dissipating, the tornado tossed cars off the
Indiana Turnpike near Scott. Like the Midway tornado, the Dunlap event was also witnessed as twin funnels: a photographer standing amidst the wreckage of the Midway Trailer Court captured the Dunlap tornado as it passed just to the north. It may have been the strongest tornado on April 11; in fact, Grazulis and other sources have assigned an F5 rating to the tornado, though it is officially rated F4.
Russiaville–Alto–Kokomo–Greentown–Marion, Indiana As the Lafayette–Middlefork tornado dissipated, a new tornado developed nearby without a definite break in the damage path. Due to changes in the intensity of the damage, surveyors split the path into two separate tornadoes. At about 7:28 p.m. CDT (00:28 UTC), the new, rapidly strengthening tornado hit
Russiaville, causing severe damage to the entire community. The tornado destroyed or damaged 90% of the community, though most of the damage ranged from F0–F3. The tornado then widened to across as it moved into nearby
Alto, causing F4-level damage to homes, before striking the southern edge of the larger city of
Kokomo. Collectively, the tornado destroyed 100 homes in Alto and Kokomo. The Maple Crest apartment complex was unroofed and incurred the collapse of its uppermost walls. As the tornado continued eastward, it apparently intensified and killed ten people in
Greentown, most of whom had been in automobiles. The tornado destroyed 80 homes, many of which it obliterated and swept away, as it struck multiple subdivisions in the Greentown area. In all, the tornado killed 18 people and injured another 600 in Howard County alone. Just south of
Swayzee, the tornado leveled some more homes and caused three additional deaths. As it struck the southern outskirts of
Marion, the tornado leveled a pair of homes, partly unroofed a
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital, and wrecked the Panorama shopping center. 20 injuries occurred at the VA hospital, and looters scavenged the shopping center. Several homes were destroyed and hundreds others damaged in Marion as well. The tornado killed five people as it traversed Grant County. Losses totaled $500.025 million, $12 million alone of which occurred near Marion.
Pittsfield–Grafton–Strongsville, Ohio Shortly after 11:00 p.m. CDT (04:00 UTC), a tornado touched down in
Lorain County, Ohio, and headed east-northeastward. Around 11:12 p.m. CDT (04:12 UTC), the tornado struck
Pittsfield, Ohio, then located at the junction of
Ohio State Route 303 and
Ohio State Road 58. Of the settlement's 50 residents, the tornado killed seven. The tornado also killed two motorists whose arrival in town coincided with the tornadoes. According to the U.S. Weather Bureau Office (WBO) in
Cleveland, Ohio, the tornado produced "total" devastation as it struck Pittsfield. The tornado destroyed 12 homes, six of which "literally vanished," along with a combined gas station/grocery store, a pair of churches, and the town hall. The tornado also toppled a statue at a
Civil War monument, but the concrete base of the statue remained standing. After ravaging Pittsfield, the tornado damaged 200 homes in and near
Grafton, some of which indicated F2-level intensity. A total of 17 homes were severely damaged in nearby
LaGrange and
Columbia Station. As the tornado reached the
Cleveland metropolitan area, it diverged into two paths about a apart. Several witnesses also saw two funnels merging into one, similar to the Midway–Dunlap tornadoes. Large trees situated apart were found to have been felled in opposite directions. The tornado displayed borderline-F5-level damage in northernmost
Strongsville. There, 18 homes were leveled, some of which were cleanly swept from their foundations, and 50 others were severely damaged in town. Damages amounted to at least $5 million and are officially listed as $50 million. Grazulis classified the tornado as an F5, but it is officially rated F4. ==Non-tornadic effects==