EF1 Tornado — Crawford, Ohio

2024-04-17 · near Bucyrus, Crawford, Ohio

Event narrative

An EF1 tornado with estimated peak winds of 110 mph occurred in Bucyrus. The tornado began near the bend of Kerstetter Road and West Southern Avenue. The tornado yielded 80 mph winds with damage to the roof of a home on West Southern Avenue. The tornado tracked northeastward and produced scattered damage in the form of broken tree limbs. The tornado continued northeastward across the Sandusky River and intensified with winds up to 100 mph. Several large hardwood trees were uprooted, a garage was destroyed, a small trailer rolled, three chimneys were blown down, several large trees were uprooted, and a shed was destroyed near the intersection of Ridge Avenue and Wise Street. The tornado continued northeastward with maximum winds of 110 mph while moving a house off its foundation. The tornado also caused roof damage to the post office and a roof collapse at a convenience store in and around downtown Bucyrus. In addition, an abandoned plant wall was blown out and several antennas were bent. The tornado continued northeastward, downed several large trees across a golf course, and damaged a storage shed. Several tree limbs were broken as the tornado tracked farther northeastward and weakened. The tornado finally ended along Beechgrove Road northeast of U.S. Highway 30.

Wider weather episode

At the surface, an occluded low drifted from northeastern WI to the central Upper Peninsula of MI during the early afternoon through early evening of the 17th. Simultaneously, the low's attendant warm front drifted eastward across central Lake Erie and far-western PA, and the low's attendant cold front swept eastward from near the northwest OH/northeast IN border and central IN to near the OH/PA border, which caused the warm sector to shrink with time. Scattered multicell thunderstorms and a few supercell thunderstorms developed along and ahead of the cold front, and persisted generally eastward across northern OH as the storms encountered weak to moderate MUCAPE and DCAPE, respectively, and moderate to strong effective bulk shear. This environment allowed storms to produce damaging hail and straight-line convective wind gusts, respectively. Three tornadoes also occurred amidst favorably-low mixed layer lifting condensation levels less than 1500 meters AGL and favorably-strong, surface-based effective storm-relative helicity.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (40.7981, -83.0005)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1166892. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.