Thunderstorm Wind in Sandusky County, Ohio

Power poles downed near Buchanan Road and Oak Drive in Ballville.

At the surface, a cold front drifted southeastward across Lake Ontario, southern ON, and southern Lower MI toward Lake Erie during the early afternoon through late evening of the 31st. Ahead of the front, several lines of multicell thunderstorms and a discrete supercell persisted generally eastward across northern OH during the late afternoon through the late evening of the 31st. Some of these storms produced sporadic straight-line convective wind damage, two mesovortex-related tornadoes, and small hail. The ambient environment of these storms included weak to moderate MUCAPE and moderate to strong effective bulk shear. It appears the development of a southwesterly to west-southwesterly low-level jet and resulting enhanced surface-based ESRH coinciding with favorably-low mixed layer LCL's contributed to the development of the two tornadoes.