EF0 Tornado — Carroll, Ohio

2024-05-17 · near New Hagerstown, Carroll, Ohio

Event narrative

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.

Wider weather episode

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.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (40.4655, -81.1845)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1184683. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.