EF1 Tornado — Lorain, Ohio

2025-06-18 · near Oberlin Arpt, Lorain, Ohio

Event narrative

After exiting Huron County and entering Lorain County, this EF1 tornado with estimated peak winds of 100 mph continued moving east-northeastward across the Firelands Boy Scout Reservation and Gore Orphanage Road before dissipating north of Becker Road and west of Baird Road in the Kipton area. Along this portion of the tornado's path, additional trees were downed and a house along Becker Road, near Gore Orphanage Road, sustained roof damage.

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 → (41.2861, -82.3424)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1289092. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.