August 11 Derecho: 616 Wind Reports, 19 Tornadoes, No Record Yet

Search the NCEI Storm Events Database for Indiana, August 11, 2026, and it returns nothing. The database's own page says it currently contains data from January 1950 to May 2026⁹, so the official federal record of the storm that crossed a four-state corridor two weeks ago does not exist and will not exist until late in the year at the earliest. The Storm Prediction Center's preliminary call that day was derecho², but SPC does not confirm official 2026 derechos until 2027, after storm data is finalized. Every file opened this week will be adjusted, argued and possibly denied against a record nobody has written yet.

This was a wind event with a tornado problem

Across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, SPC logged 616 preliminary wind reports against 19 preliminary tornado reports on August 11². Thirty-two to one. Nationally the day produced 1,031 wind reports, 23 tornado reports and 138 hail reports², which puts roughly six of every ten wind reports in the country inside that corridor, along with most of the tornado reports.

Where the 19 sit matters more than the ratio does. Ohio produced ten. Illinois produced nine. Indiana produced zero, Kentucky produced zero, and Iowa, west of the corridor, produced four alongside just 33 wind reports².

Survey teams have narrowed that picture since, and every rating below is preliminary. NWS Wilmington confirmed ten tornadoes in its area, the strongest an EF-2 with 115 mph peak winds on a 3.5-mile path south of Catawba in Clark County, and it separately surveyed two straight-line swaths it rated as thunderstorm wind rather than tornado: one west of Mount Orab at an estimated 80 mph across nine miles by four, one from Sardinia to Mowrystown at an estimated 90 mph across eight by three and a half¹¹. NWS Chicago confirmed eight tornadoes in its area, the strongest the Monee, Illinois to Crown Point, Indiana EF-2¹. NWS Lincoln rated the White Heath tornado EF-1, estimated 100 mph, on a 24.59-mile path¹³. NWS Quad Cities confirmed four in Delaware and Clinton Counties, Iowa¹⁴. NWS Northern Indiana confirmed none anywhere in its area, and NWS Indianapolis confirmed none on August 11 either, while recording a fatality in its own area: a four-year-old child at Country Squire Lakes in Jennings County, killed at 3:15 PM when a tree came down on a house¹².

For a claim in Marion County, Indiana or anywhere in Kentucky, there is no tornado in the record to argue about, which removes a whole category of carrier argument and also removes the survey polygon you might have wanted to sit inside. In Clark County, Ohio, the argument is live, and whether your address falls inside or outside that 3.5-mile path is a question somebody will ask in year two.

Why so few of those reports carry a wind speed

Only 165 of the 1,031 national wind reports carry any speed figure at all². Sixteen percent. Inside the corridor the split is sharp: Illinois 30 of 146, Indiana 26 of 155, Ohio 5 of 161, Kentucky 4 of 154². Ohio and Kentucky both land at three percent. Iowa, with the smallest report count in the region, ran 48 percent.

Push it further and the picture gets thinner. Across all four corridor states, 32 reports carry a speed of 70 mph or higher: 18 in Illinois, 11 in Indiana, 2 in Ohio, 1 in Kentucky².

Be careful about what that describes. SPC preliminary reports are damage observations phoned in by spotters, emergency managers, law enforcement and the public. A report reading "trees and power lines down" with no number tells you where a spotter was standing, not how hard the wind blew at the address next door. The three-percent figures in Ohio and Kentucky are a fact about the reporting network on a Tuesday afternoon in August.

Nobody was standing at most of these addresses with an instrument.

The measured values that do exist cluster west. The peak measured gust of the event was 99 mph at Gary/Chicago International Airport¹, with 97 at Sugar Grove, 96 at Shorewood, 91 at Mokena, 85 at Munster, 85 at Farley in Iowa, 82 at Columbus (KCMH) and 81 at Carlisle on the Kentucky Mesonet. NWS Chicago's own description of the wind field runs higher than any of those instruments did, at swaths of 70 to locally 100-plus mph straight-line winds¹, and that gap between a described swath and a recorded observation is the gap a carrier will work in. A 110 mph figure circulating for Portage in Porter County is damage-estimated, not measured, and putting it in a file as a measurement is an invitation to have the whole exhibit impeached.

So on most addresses in this footprint, the wind speed will be whatever the file establishes: the nearest ASOS or Mesonet observation with its distance and time stamp, the local storm report for that county, whether the address falls inside or outside any NWS survey polygon, and dated photography taken before anything is tarped. This is the same documentation habit described in pinning a hurricane date of loss to the observation record instead of to landfall, and it is harder here, because there is no landfall and no name.

Straight-line or tornado: what actually turns on it

A derecho is never a named storm. Hurricane, named-storm and tropical-cyclone deductibles trigger only on a system named by the National Hurricane Center or the National Weather Service, and nothing on August 11 had a name. The tornado-versus-straight-line question does not move that needle either, because both perils sit under the same windstorm and hail trigger in a standard HO-3 or commercial property form.

Attribution matters when water arrives with the wind. Anti-concurrent-causation language excludes a loss where an excluded cause contributes to it in any sequence, concurrently or otherwise, alongside a covered cause, and the flood or surface-water exclusion can swallow a wind claim whole.

Illinois enforces ACC. Bozek v. Erie Insurance Group, 2015 IL App (2d) 150155, 46 N.E.3d 362, applied the clause and measured concurrence by when each cause contributed to the loss rather than when it arose, and the court expressly left the public-policy challenge to ACC clauses for a future court⁷. Ohio enforces it too: Hartman v. Erie Ins. Co., 2017-Ohio-668 (6th Dist.), paragraph 44, held that a separately purchased water-backup endorsement did not override the base policy's ACC clause⁸. Indiana runs the other way, applying efficient proximate cause under Hartford Cas. Ins. Co. v. Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library, 860 N.E.2d 636, 646 (Ind. Ct. App. 2007), a passage still quoted in Indiana opinions as recently as 2024. Kentucky has no published state appellate decision enforcing an ACC clause. The issue is open there, and that finding is verified by absence rather than by a holding, which is a weaker footing than a case cite; treat it as an argument available to you rather than a rule in your favor.

The EF scale deserves the same skepticism a carrier applies to your estimate. SPC's own page calls it "a set of wind estimates (not measurements) based on damage," built on three-second gusts estimated at the point of damage, and cautions that a three-second gust is not the same wind as a standard surface observation³. An EF rating is a damage inference. When a carrier's consultant argues an EF number at your insured, they are arguing from the same category of evidence you are, and a careful inference drawn at the address beats a coarse one drawn from a survey vehicle three counties away.

Where each state's clock actually starts

Illinois has no acknowledgment day-count and no decision day-count anywhere in its claims rules. What it has is "reasonable promptness" under 215 ILCS 5/154.6, which is a standard rather than a date. The one hard number is a single delay letter due 75 calendar days from the report or 25 days after proof of loss, whichever is less (50 Ill. Adm. Code 919.80(d)(7)(B)), with no recurring interval after it. Do not diary an Illinois file for 45-day carrier updates. They are not owed.

Indiana has no unfair claims settlement regulation at all, which leaves an Indiana file leaning on the policy's own prompt-payment language, the common-law duty of good faith, and whatever your dated correspondence proves about who sat on what. Kentucky's 15-day acknowledgment runs in business days (806 KAR 12:095 section 1(5)), and over a mid-August week that costs several days at the front end, which is exactly where the notice-timing decision gets made. Ohio's deadlines are real but blunt on their own: OAC 3901-1-54(A) expressly disclaims a private right of action⁶, so those dates are DOI-complaint and negotiation ammunition.

Then the outside clock. Indiana voids any residential first-party clause limiting suit to less than two years from the date of loss (IC 27-1-13-17(b)). Kentucky bars a clause limiting suit to less than one year from accrual (KRS 304.14-370). Illinois tolls the policy's one-year clause from the filing of proof of loss until the carrier denies (215 ILCS 5/143.1), so an unanswered Illinois proof of loss freezes the clock instead of running it. Ohio enforces contractual one-year suit clauses with no statutory floor located. Iowa's standard fire policy carries a twelve-month suit clause (Iowa Code 515.109). For an August 11, 2026 date of loss, an Ohio homeowner on a one-year clause is out of court on August 11, 2027, and calendaring that now, in the file, is the same exercise as the September 2027 wall sitting under every North Carolina Helene claim.

Indiana Bulletin 280 is not a claim-handling order

Indiana's Department of Insurance issued Bulletin 280 on August 17, signed by Commissioner Holly Lambert⁵. It imposes a 60-day statewide moratorium on policy cancellation for policyholders directly affected by the August 2026 events, across all lines, and suspends late-payment penalties, applied retroactively to the day before the events⁵. The bulletin says in its own words that it is not a waiver, only an extension of the period in which to pay the premium⁵. Proof-of-loss deadlines, appraisal demand windows and suit-limitation periods run untouched.

Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky and Iowa have issued nothing for this event as of August 26. Nothing at all. Illinois stands out: a governor's disaster proclamation on August 18 covering 15 counties, and silence from the Department of Insurance. Ohio's state of emergency is a signed proclamation rather than a numbered executive order, now covering Perry, Muskingum, Franklin and Morgan counties.

FEMA declared EM-3651-IN on August 15, with an incident beginning August 11 and 53 designated counties⁴. The authorization is narrow: Public Assistance Category B emergency protective measures, direct federal assistance only, with no Individual Assistance and no Individuals and Households Program money⁴. A policyholder who hears "FEMA declared" and waits for a grant is waiting for something that was never authorized. Indiana's Major Disaster Declaration request went in on August 20 and remains pending, and IDHS is telling residents not to apply for FEMA assistance yet¹⁰. Ohio requested expedited joint preliminary damage assessments on August 20, naming 18 candidate Individual Assistance counties and 16 candidate Public Assistance counties. Illinois, Kentucky and Iowa have no federal declaration at all.

Which puts the whole burden back on the file. This week it wants the SPC local storm report for the county with its time stamp, the nearest measured observation with its distance from the risk, a note recording whether the address falls inside or outside any NWS survey polygon, dated interior and roof-plane photography taken before the tarp, the carrier's acknowledgment letter with the date it actually arrived, and a proof of loss delivered by a method that produces a receipt, because in Illinois that delivery is what stops the suit clock and in Ohio it is what starts the 21-day decision window.

Questions adjusters are asking this week