EF1 tornado in Fayette County, Pennsylvania

A storm survey performed by the National Weather Service preliminarily confirmed an EF1 tornado, with maximum winds of 90 MPH, occurred in southeast Fayette County and northeast Preston County near Fike Run.

The damage commenced along Guthrie Road in Fayette County, where several hardwood trees were uprooted. In addition, two barn doors were blown off and deposited across Flat Rock Road. The twister continued southeast causing more downed trees and snapped large branches off of Flat Rock Road on the east side of the road near a gas well pad. The tornado then crossed the state line into West Virginia.

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.