Thunderstorm Wind — Marion, Ohio

2020-06-10 · near Espyville, Marion, Ohio

Event narrative

Marion County Emergency Management provided evidence of significant wind damage across the Marion area due to severe thunderstorm winds of up to 80 mph. Numerous trees and power lines were downed across the city with several large trees falling onto residences. Winds ripped off a significant portion of a roof of an industrial building on the west side of Marion. Winds also caused the brick facade of a building in downtown Marion to collapse onto a vehicle. The vehicle was occupied at the time of the damage and the female occupant sustained minor injuries. There was also evidence on social media that a gustnado may have formed with the squall line that moved through the Marion area just before 6 pm local time.

Wider weather episode

The remnants of Tropical Storm Cristobal entered the western Great Lakes region on June 9th, extending a warm front across the Ohio Valley during the evening hours. A hot, moist, and tropical air mass entered the region behind the front for June 10th, resulting in high temperatures in the upper 80s and lower 90s and dew points in the 70s across the region. Heat indices in Northwest Ohio reached the upper 90s during the afternoon of the 10th. A shortwave trough and associated surface cold front entered from the west, allowing for showers and thunderstorms to develop over western Ohio around 3 PM on the 10th in the warm, unstable air mass. Storms began as discrete or clustered cells over western Ohio before congealing into a squall line. This squall line propagated from west to east across northern Ohio but individual cell motion was from south-southwest to north-northeast as the line moved through northern Ohio on the evening of the 10th. The main threat from severe thunderstorms were damaging winds with the strongest winds occurring in Northwest Ohio. Storms produced wind gusts up to 80 mph in the Lake Erie Islands and adjacent mainland areas of Ottawa and Erie Counties in Ohio, with wind damage across Oak Harbor, Catawba Island, Port Clinton, Marblehead, South Bass Island, and Sandusky. Another powerful segment of the line moved across Marion County, including the city of Marion, prompting sporadic damage in the city with wind gusts up to 80 mph. There was one injury with this event in Marion as a facade of a building collapsed onto a nearby vehicle. The intensity of the squall line waned as it passed east of Interstate 71, though it remained severe with sporadic wind damage. As the squall line moved east of Interstate 77 after dark, the line intensified as the storms caught up to the outflow, and backed winds ahead of the line rejuvenated the thunderstorms. Some strong storms moved across Trumbull and Mahoning Counties, producing additional wind damage before moving into Pennsylvania.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (40.5758, -83.2135)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 896122. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.