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EF2 tornado in Richland County, Ohio

Tornado March 14, 2024 · Richland County, Ohio

EF2
Rating
10.3 mi
Whole path
250 yd
Path width
$450K
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Crawford County → Richland County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 250 yards (0.14 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF2 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF2 is considerable damage: roofs torn off well-built houses, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, consistent with estimated gusts of 111–135 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

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.

The wider storm

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.

Began near New Pittsburgh (40.9692, -82.7252).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

2 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1166698. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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