Flash Flood in Wayne County, Ohio

Widespread flash flooding in Orrville. Several basements flooded, multiple basement wall collapses, including a home on Hostetler Road. Multiple water rescues from vehicles driving into flooded roadways, including Crown Hill Road and Mineral Springs Street, where the water department experienced flooding.

A surface trough was oriented south to north across northeast Ohio during the afternoon and early evening of August 8th, 2024, with then Tropical Depression Debby centered over the Carolinas. Strong tropical moisture advection northwestward into the area and modest mixed layer CAPE (1000 j/kg) allowed for thunderstorm development throughout the mid afternoon into the early evening hours, with thunderstorm coverage and intensity increasing near sunset. Deep layer sheer was minimal with slow moving/stationary thunderstorms and intense rainfall rates producing extreme rainfall amounts and flash flooding from eastern Wayne County northeast through Summit County into extreme southeast Cuyahoga and southwest Geauga counties. A narrow axis of 3 to 5 inches of rainfall was estimated by radar across these areas, with rain gauge reports of 5 to 6.6 inches of rainfall within the axis of heaviest rainfall. A majority of the rain fell in about a three hour period, with precipitation frequency estimates equating this amount of rain in a three year period at an average recurrence interval of 1000 years, or about a 0.1% chance of occurrence in any given year.