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EF0 tornado in Carroll County, Ohio

Tornado May 17, 2024 · Carroll County, Ohio

EF0

Rating

0.2 mi

Path length

40 yd

Path width

$250K

Damage as recorded

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 40 yards (0.02 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 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

Video confirmed a brief tornado occurred beginning at the Leesville Lake South Fork Marina and continuing northeast across Leesville Lake. Rapid development was noted as a narrow, intense ground circulation appeared, tossing docks and pontoon boats. Based on the destruction of a tree in tandem with the destruction of non-DIs evident in the video and the visual of rotational speed of the ground circulation, the peak wind in this small tornado is estimated to be around 80 MPH.

The wider storm

Although overall levels of instability were fairly low, enough of that parameter, plus shear, was concentrated in the 0 to 3 km layer to allow for the formation of low-topped supercells over the Upper Ohio Valley during the early to mid-afternoon hours on May 17th. Interaction with a surface boundary allowed for tornadogenesis in a few of the storms as low-level streamwise vorticity was ingested into updrafts. Most tornadoes occurred in southwest Pennsylvania, but one small tornado did form at Leesville Lake.

Began near New Hagerstown (40.4655, -81.1845).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1184683. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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