1884 Oakville, Indiana tornado

the 1884 Oakville, Indiana tornado was a destructive F5 tornado which struck the small town of Oakville, Indiana on April 1, 1884. The tornado first touched down around 5 pm on April 1, 1884.

This tornado is the strongest known tornado to strike Delaware County, Indiana. Another tornado occurred shortly before the Oakville F5, and was affiliated with the same funnel according to reports. It is agreed that 8 people died during the tornado. The tornado was rated a F5 tornado by Grazulis.

According to newspaper reports at the time, the tornado peaked at a width of a quarter of a mile wide, and the tornado likely touched down around 5 miles west of Oakville, and quickly intensified, with the first instance of probable F4-F5 damage occurring 2 miles west of Oakville. It proceeded to reduce most of Oakville to a "pile of rubbish", before producing F4 or F5 damage just north of Luray, killing another person.

Meteorological setup
On the morning of April 1, 1884, a low was located over eastern Nebraska, this low was moving east across the Missouri River Valley, and had provided freezing weather behind it across parts of Nebraska and Colorado as of that morning. Meanwhile, further east, temperatures in the 50s and 60s existed across parts of Indiana, with spots further north reaching the mid 40s that morning. Generally rainy weather was noted to have existed from the Gulf Coast northward to the Ohio Valley, Great Lakes and into the Northwestern United States.

Southerly winds existed across the southern United States, as well as northward across the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys, with northerly to easterly winds existing further north across the Great Lakes, New England, the Mid-Atlantic region, Minnesota and the Dakotas. The low quickly moved east across Iowa, Illinois and Indiana that afternoon, producing severe thunderstorms and even a few tornadoes across Indiana that afternoon. West of the low, blizzard conditions and freezing temperatures existed, with blizzard conditions being reported across the region hit by the tornadoes later that afternoon.