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EF0 tornado in Butler County, Pennsylvania

Tornado May 21, 2025 · Butler County, Pennsylvania

EF0
Rating
0.6 mi
Whole path
160 yd
Path width
$55K
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Butler County → Butler County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 160 yards (0.09 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

A closed caption security video captured a tornado touching down northwest of Northvue, causing the roof to lift off of the Center Township salt dome and depositing it in the parking lot behind the facility. The first sign of damage was north of Unionville Road, where less than five trees had large branches down and one was uprooted. The worst damage happened to the salt dome as described above, where the maximum wind of 85 MPH was estimated. The only other damage nearby to the salt dome was a few hardwood trees that had large limbs broken off. The twister lifted in an open field just northeast of the salt dome facility.

The wider storm

An occluding surface low slowly drifted across Ohio on May 21st. Bands of showers with embedded thunderstorms moved across southwest Pennsylvania. During the mid to late afternoon, one convective band, associated with ample 0-3km CAPE and surface vorticity, was able to generate four tornadoes across southwest PA. Three were relatively brief and weak, but one longer-track EF1 was noted in Washington County. Multiple rounds of slow-moving heavier rain also produced a number of flash flooding incidents.

Began near Fisher Hgts (40.9381, -79.9633).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

2 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1266125. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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