EF2 Tornado — Richland, Ohio

2024-03-14 · near New Pittsburgh, Richland, Ohio

Event narrative

This EF2 tornado with estimated peak winds of 120 mph entered Richland County from Crawford County and tracked east-southeastward across southern portions of the Plymouth area. The tornado tracked near West and Opdyke Roads, and crossed OH-98, OH-61, and OH-191 before ending near Willet Road, between Opdyke Road and Richards Road. Extensive damage to homes, outbuildings, trees, and power poles occurred before the tornado dissipated.

Wider weather episode

A cold front drifted south-southeastward from near the northern shore of Lake Erie and southern Lower MI to near the southern shore of Lake Erie and far-northwestern OH during the evening of the 14th as a warm and relatively-moist sector preceded the front in northern OH. Multicell and supercell thunderstorms occurred along and ahead of the front, and persisted generally eastward. Severe hail, some large, and isolated straight-line convective wind damage occurred as the storms encountered weak to moderate MUCAPE, relatively-steep midlevel lapse rates near 7C/km, and moderate to strong effective bulk shear. Three separate supercells spawned a tornado amidst favorably-strong, surface-based effective storm relative helicity and favorably-low mixed layer lifting condensation levels less than 1500 meters AGL. The training supercell thunderstorms with heavy rainfall produced isolated flash flooding as well.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (40.9692, -82.7252)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1166698. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.