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EF1 tornado in Montgomery County, Ohio

Tornado October 31, 2013 · Montgomery County, Ohio

EF1
Rating
0.6 mi
Path length
50 yd
Path width
8
Injuries
$2.0M
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 50 yards (0.03 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

The tornado touched down just northeast of Interstate 75 at Highway 40, exit number 63 in Vandalia. Initial damage consisted of the collapse of a cinderblock drive through store, and significant destruction of the roof and some of the cinderblocks on an uninhabited commercial building. This structure also had large plate glass windows blown in. Additional significant roof damage occurred to a neighboring business, as well as the snapping of some power poles. The tornado continued on to a restaurant, in which the windows were blown in and significant faade and roof damage occurred. Eight people inside the restaurant sustained minor injuries from glass. In the restaurant parking lot, there were numerous vehicles which had windows blown out, with some vehicles shifted or pushed from their parked location. There was a large pickup truck which was lifted and tossed, landing on top of another vehicle. The tornado continued into a residential subdivision, where at least 3 homes sustained damage which rendered them uninhabitable. There were additional homes with partial wall collapses and more than half the roof removed. Other homes had holes in the roof due to being impaled by debris. There was also significant damage due to large trees being snapped off and damaging the homes. Large portions of roofing and sheds were carried at least a city block. The tornado then lifted while in the residential subdivision. Based on the damage surveyed, the maximum wind speed of this tornado was estimated to be between 100 and 110 miles per hour.

The wider storm

A potent low pressure system moved across the region, bringing strong winds aloft across the Ohio Valley. Showers that developed along and ahead of a cold front associated with this storm system were capable of producing damaging winds and isolated weak tornadoes. This line of showers producing the damage across southwestern Ohio continued past midnight on October 31st and into the early morning hours of November 1st.

Began near Vandalia (39.8929, -84.1861).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

2 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 477818. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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