F1 tornado, Baltimore County, Maryland, July 24, 1995

1. F040 to 72 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. F173 to 112 mphthis tornado

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. F2113 to 157 mph

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. F3158 to 206 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. F4207 to 260 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. F5261 to 318 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unrated

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

F1

Date

July 24, 1995

Touchdown

3:20 PM EDT (19:20 UTC)

Path length

2.0 miles (3.2 km)

Path width

73 yards (67 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000 to $500,000

County

Baltimore County

Touchdown point

39.530, -76.670

Record number

950

A tornado left about a two mile path of damage across York Road, south of Hereford, east toward the town of Monkton. At one farm 15 trees of various types were snapped and uprooted. One spruce fell into the living room of the farmhouse and separated the wrap-around porch from the main house. At the next farm, a tree fell on a car with a woman inside. It smashed the windshield but she was unharmed. Fences were blown down like toothpicks and an estimated 50 trees were lost. Across York Road, a tree fell on a house damaging the attic and a bedroom. Rain caused some additional damage inside the home. Another home closer to Monkton had heavy tree damage around it. About 800 homes lost power in the Monkton area.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 06:31 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

Baltimore/Martin (MTN), 32 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Sterling radar (KLWX), 94 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:21 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

The live radar over the trackEvery 1995 tornado in MarylandEvery tornado in Maryland since 1950Warnings in force in Maryland nowThe forecast where you are

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.