Here’s the latest on today’s tornado(es) in northwestern Indiana about 40 miles west of South Bend:

A severe thunderstorm and a possible tornado swept off Lake Michigan Wednesday evening, downing trees and power lines and causing some injuries.

Heavy damage was also reported at a boat show scheduled to begin Thursday at the Washington Park Marina on Lake Michigan, police said.

LaPorte County 911 Assistant Director Beth West said some injuries were reported in the county, but she did not have any details.

Sightings of funnel clouds in the area midway between South Bend and Gary were reported to the National Weather Service, but no touchdowns were immediately confirmed.

Additional police officers were called in to work in Michigan City because of the troubles from the storm.

NIPSCO spokesman Mike Charbonneau said about 3,800 homes and businesses were without power in the Michigan City and LaPorte areas immediately after the storm moved through.

“The storm hit pretty hard in those areas,” he said.

West said the storm hit especially hard in Westville, where the wind scattered a lumber company’s entire stack of lumber across the railroad tracks.

More here.

Here is a very, very, very rough — and entirely unofficial, and probably quite wrong in terms of the details — map of where the tornadoes or cells that seemed to do the most damage went, based on the radar loops and the various initial reports of damage:

Meanwhile, there’s quite a bit of lightning up in the Benton Harbor area. And it looks like there could be more where that came from tonight.

UPDATE: In other news, because my aborted attempt at “post-storm chasing” tonight proved utterly futile, and because its futility is currently dominating the homepage, I’m going to delete those posts and put them in sequential order after the jump, so the historical record is preserved while more important posts are bumped back up to the top of my blog for now:

Storm chasing
Aug. 23, 2006, 8:30 PM:

The storm clouds move off to the south. Now that it's safe, I'm going to head west to check out the damage. Will attempt to liveblog.

Moblog audio post
Aug. 23, 2006, 8:50 PM:

source file
MP3 File

Moblog audio post
Aug. 23, 2006, 9:09 PM:

MP3 File

Cut and run
Aug. 23, 2006, 9:21 PM:

Here's a radar look at the storm that caused us to call off our storm damage chasing adventure. We're almost home now. Storm now looks like it will go just east of SB. Anyway we'll probably try again tomorrow morning, once Lake Michigan has calmed down!