Thunderstorm Wind — Muskingum, Ohio

2012-06-29 · near Freeland, Muskingum, Ohio

Event narrative

One woman was killed and another man injured when the barn they were in collapsed due to the straight line winds. They were checking on their animals when the barn collapsed. The man was able to escape. The woman was not.

Wider weather episode

An anomalously strong ridge centered across the Southeast brought record heat to the Upper Ohio Valley with the area in a zonal flow on the northern edge of the ridge. A weak frontal boundary extended from northern Indiana into western Pennsylvania. Abundant moisture (1.75-2.00 PWAT), strong instability (SBCAPE 4000-5000 J/kg), moderate shear (40kts 0-6km), and a short wave just south of the boundary provided the ingredients for a long-tracked mesoscale convective system, classified by the Storm Prediction Center as a derecho, to track all the way from northern Indiana across eastern Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania, northern WV, and western Maryland. As the MCS crossed the area, widespread wind damage was reported across areas primarily south and west of Pittsburgh. There were several reports of structural damage and damage led to a fatality when a barn collapsed in Muskingum county. Power outages were widespread with up to 130,000 outages reported immediately after the storms passage, most of which, were in Ohio. Muskingum and Guernsey counties sustained $712,000 and $500,000 in damages respectively. This also became on of the the costliest disasters to hit Ohio, right behind Hurricane Ike in 2008.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (39.8998, -81.7715)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 391359. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.