EF0 Tornado — Ottawa, Ohio

2025-06-18 · near Elliston, Ottawa, Ohio

Event narrative

An EF0 tornado with estimated peak winds of 80-mph impacted the Elmore area and moved east-northeastward during its lifespan. The tornado began near the northwest corner of OH Route 163 and Elliston Trowbridge Road before damaging a metal outbuilding and destroying a grain silo. After the tornado crossed Elliston Trowbridge Road, it damaged the roof of a residence and snapped a couple trees. Debris settled in a field beyond the residence before the tornado dissipated before reaching Graytown Road.

Wider weather episode

A slow-moving cold front was draped west to east across the southern Great Lakes during the day of June 18th, 2025, with low pressure near Chicago drifting east toward southern Ontario. An upper-level shortwave trough moving eastward across the southern Great Lakes during the afternoon brought scattered showers and thunderstorms to portions of northern Ohio, with slow-moving and back-building storms along a lake breeze front in far-northeast Ohio, which brought flash flooding to portions of Ashtabula County. A quasi-linear convective system organized and strengthened across Illinois and Indiana during the afternoon and early evening hours, and moved eastward across northern Ohio during the evening. This line of storms generated widespread damaging straight-line wind gusts up to approximately 80 mph and three tornadoes in northern Ohio. All of these storms occurred amidst moderate to strong effective bulk shear and primarily weak to moderate MUCAPE.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (41.5175, -83.2828)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1289061. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.