EF1 tornado in Morrow County, Ohio

This tornado had peak intensity of EF1, with estimated peak winds of 95-mph, and impacted the northeastern and eastern outskirts of Mount Gilead. The tornado began along U.S. Route 42, near Home Road, and caused extensive tree damage, which included multiple snapped and uprooted trees. The tornado continued southeastward, crossed Township Road 103, and caused sporadic tree damage. The tornado then crossed OH Route 95, near Township Road 110, and destroyed a 60 foot by 100 foot outbuilding. Debris from this outbuilding were displaced about 100 to 200 yards to the south-southeast by the tornado before the tornado ended. Scattered tree damage and some structural damage associated with straight line convective wind gusts up to 75-mph were found both north and south of the tornado track. Radar data suggest this tornado was associated with a cyclonic mesovortex along the poleward side of the descending rear-inflow jet of a bow echo and the bow echo was embedded within the flanking line of a cyclonic supercell.

At the surface, a cold front moved from the southern Great Lakes region to the Upper and Middle Ohio Valley during the early afternoon through late evening hours of the 26th as a low moved east-northeastward from southern Quebec to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Along and ahead of the front, scattered multicell and isolated supercell thunderstorms impacted northern Ohio as the storms persisted generally eastward or southeastward during the late afternoon through mid-evening hours of the 26th, amidst moderate to strong effective bulk shear and weak to moderate MUCAPE. The storms produced sporadic straight-line convective wind damage and severe hail. Two weak tornadoes occurred; one in Morrow County and the other in Knox County, where mixed layer LCL's were favorably-low and surface-based ESRH was maximized due to southwesterly low-level jet development.