EF0 tornado in Fayette County, Pennsylvania

A storm survey performed by the National Weather Service preliminarily confirmed a brief EF0 tornado, with maximum winds of 65 MPH, occurred in central Fayette County near New Salem. Video confirmation confirmed a touchdown. There were a few hardwood trees that had large branches down and a small tree was uprooted near Lambert Footdale Road. No homes or structures were affected.

A warm front pushed a swath of light to moderate showers across the Upper Ohio Valley during the morning and midday hours of May 11th. Behind this boundary, the increase in low-level moisture and partial clearing helped instability to recover fairly rapidly, and allowed for an increase in shear as well. Discrete storms then fired ahead of an advancing cold front during the early afternoon, and then they advanced across southwest Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia through the remainder of the afternoon and early evening. In eastern Ohio, all storm reports were of hail between 0.75 and 1.25 inch diameter, but as storms matured in southwest Pennsylvania, hail reports increased up to 1.75 inch, as well as a few reports of straight-line wind. Storms closer to the PA/WV border were able to take advantage of sufficient low-level instability and surface vorticity to allow for the development of three tornadoes, one of which was a more significant EF2 twister.