EF1 Tornado — Holmes, Ohio

2025-06-09 · near Clark, Holmes, Ohio

Event narrative

An EF1 tornado with estimated peak winds of 105-mph impacted the Lake Buckhorn community and vicinity. It began just west of the intersection of Susten Drive and Geneva Drive. The tornado then moved northeastward across Mullheim Drive and W Buckhorn Drive and through the Lake Buckhorn community. Dozens of trees were snapped or uprooted in a neighborhood on the west side of Lake Buckhorn. Some of the trees had trunks estimated to be between one and two feet in diameter, and the tornado was at its widest point of 80 yards near the west shore of the lake. A pontoon boat and adjacent dock were also lifted partially by the tornado. The tornado then crossed Lake Buckhorn and weakened gradually, but dozens of additional trees were downed on the east side of the lake as the tornado crossed East Buckhorn Drive and traversed Lucerne Drive. The tornado then crossed OH Route 83 and damaged the roof of a barn before dissipating.

Wider weather episode

At the surface, a cold front extended southwestward across eastern Lake Erie, northeast OH, and southwest OH, and drifted eastward across the same areas during the early afternoon through mid-evening of the 9th. Along the cold front, a line of multicell thunderstorms impacted Holmes County and vicinity, and produced a weak mesovortex-related tornado in the Lake Buckhorn community and vicinity. The line of storms persisted generally east-northeastward in an ambient environment comprised of weak MUCAPE, strong effective bulk shear, favorable mixed layer LCL's less than 1500 meters AGL, but surface-based ESRH less than 100 meters squared per second squared.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (40.4686, -81.9158)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1285618. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.