F0 tornado in Defiance County, Ohio

Tornado November 10, 2002 · Defiance County, Ohio

Rating

3.0 mi

Path length

50 yd

Path width

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 F0 means. This tornado was rated on Fujita’s original scale, used until 2007. F0 meant light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken; the scale paired it with winds of 40–72 mph, figures later judged too high, especially toward the top of the scale, and revised downward in the Enhanced Fujita scale. Ratings then, as now, came from the damage.

What the National Weather Service wrote

This tornado originated in Van Wert county and moved across Paulding and Putnam counties before entering the extreme southwest corner of Defiance county about 5 miles southeast of Ayersville. NWS ground and aerial survey found the tornado was skipping, and produced F0 damage to five homes, some trees and a few barns and outbuildings. The tornado then exited Defiance county about 4 miles southeast of Ayersville.

The wider storm

On Sunday, November 10th, 2002 a cold front trailed from a deep surface low over northern Lake Michigan into central Missouri. Ahead of the cold front the KILN (Wilmington, OH) 1200 UTC sounding showed an unstable airmass with CAPE (Convectively Available Potential Energy) of 1148 J/kg and a Storm Relative Helicity (SRH) of 408 m/s2. Another sounding at 1800 UTC showed CAPE had increased on a modified sounding to 1313 J/kg, with SRH increasing to 587 m/s2. A broken squall line developed from Indianapolis to Fort Wayne Indiana and Defiance Ohio with the cold front. A small low topped supercell developed ahead of the line over Blackford county Indiana and was moving northeast at 50 MPH. This parent supercell produced 3 seperate tornadoes in Indiana (see StormData, Indiana, Northeast for more information) before crossing into Ohio. There the supercell intensified and a tornado touched down in Van Wert County Ohio, reaching F4 in strength as it reached the city of Van Wert. The tornado then moved northeast with a total path length of 53 miles, producing F3 damage in Paulding and Putnam counties, and F0 damage in Defiance and Henry counties.

Began near Ayersville (41.1833, -84.2167).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

F4 Van Wert County 4 dead F0 Henry County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 5322865. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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