Tornadoes · United States · Ohio · 2006

F0 tornado, Deerfield, Ohio, July 4, 2006

This F0 tornado ran 1.5 miles across Portage County on July 4, 2006, touching down at 4:30 PM EDT and reaching 25 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $30,000 of property damage.

The rating scale

Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.

  1. F040 to 72 mphthis tornado

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

  2. F173 to 112 mph

    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.

The record

Rating
F0
Date
July 4, 2006
Touchdown
4:30 PM EDT (20:30 UTC)
Path length
1.5 miles (2.4 km)
Path width
25 yards (23 m)
Deaths
0
Injuries
0
Property damage
$30,000
County
Portage County
Touchdown point
41.020, -81.080
Lift-off point
41.020, -81.070
Record number
713

What the Weather Service recorded

During the late afternoon hours of July 4th, an F0 tornado touched down just west of Deerfield in Portage County. The path of the tornado was mainly through open fields, but a barn along the path sustained major structural damage. One wall of the barn was completely blown in, and about half of the roof was torn off. The barn had a slate roof, and many pieces of slate pierced the ground in the vicinity of the barn. Numerous other beams and boards from the barn were observed sticking from the ground. The tornado then continued through an open field before dissipating. No additional structural or crop damage was observed.

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

What forecasters said that day

The local office's own words before the tornado touched down, as it sent them, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service text.

NWS Cleveland, OH wrote its last area forecast discussion before the tornado touched down at Jul 4, 3:30 PM EDT, 1 hour earlier.

Area forecast discussion, Jul 4, 3:30 PM EDT, 1 hour before
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Hazardous weather outlook, Jul 4, 5:44 AM EDT, 10 hours 46 minutes before
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The air that afternoon

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

Pittsburgh, PA (KPIT), 12:00Z

8.5 hours before the tornado, 107 km from the path. July 4, 2006.

Skew-T log-pSkew-T log-p diagram, Pittsburgh, PA at 12:00Z on 2006-07-04Temperature and dew point through the depth of the atmosphere, with the mixed-layer parcel lifted from the surface. Mixed-layer CAPE 522 joules per kilogram, CIN -47, lifted condensation level 661 meters above ground. Wind barbs in knots down the right edge.LCLLFCEL10008507005003002001001 km2 km3 km6 km9 km12 km15 km-30°-20°-10°0°10°20°30°40°
Temperature in red, dew point in green, the mixed-layer parcel dashed. The warm shading is its CAPE, the cool shading the inhibition it has to break through.
HodographHodograph, Pittsburgh, PA at 12:00Z on 2006-07-04The wind through the lowest 10 kilometers as a curve, rings every 10 meters per second labeled in knots. Zero to 1 km storm-relative helicity 76 square meters per square second, 0 to 6 km bulk shear 25 knots.193958Sfc1 km3 km6 km9 kmRMLM
The wind turning with height, colored by layer: ground to 1 km, 1 to 3 km, 3 to 6 km, 6 to 10 km. RM and LM are the right and left moving storms Bunkers' method gives; the shaded area is the 0 to 1 km storm-relative helicity.
Mixed-layer CAPE
522 J/kg
Mixed-layer CIN
-47 J/kg
Surface CAPE
242 J/kg
Mixed-layer LCL
661 m above ground
0-6 km bulk shear
25 kt
0-1 km bulk shear
23 kt
0-1 km storm-relative helicity
76 m²/s²
0-3 km storm-relative helicity
87 m²/s²
Significant tornado parameter
0.1
Supercell composite
1.2
0-3 km lapse rate
5.0 K/km

Open this sounding in Storm Lab

Pittsburgh, PA (KPIT), 00:00Z

3.5 hours after it, 107 km from the path. July 5, 2006.

Skew-T log-pSkew-T log-p diagram, Pittsburgh, PA at 00:00Z on 2006-07-05Temperature and dew point through the depth of the atmosphere, with the mixed-layer parcel lifted from the surface. Mixed-layer CAPE 531 joules per kilogram, CIN -26, lifted condensation level 761 meters above ground. Wind barbs in knots down the right edge.LCLLFCEL10008507005003002001001 km2 km3 km6 km9 km12 km15 km-30°-20°-10°0°10°20°30°40°
Temperature in red, dew point in green, the mixed-layer parcel dashed. The warm shading is its CAPE, the cool shading the inhibition it has to break through.
HodographHodograph, Pittsburgh, PA at 00:00Z on 2006-07-05The wind through the lowest 10 kilometers as a curve, rings every 10 meters per second labeled in knots. Zero to 1 km storm-relative helicity 83 square meters per square second, 0 to 6 km bulk shear 33 knots.19395878Sfc1 km3 km6 km9 kmRMLM
The wind turning with height, colored by layer: ground to 1 km, 1 to 3 km, 3 to 6 km, 6 to 10 km. RM and LM are the right and left moving storms Bunkers' method gives; the shaded area is the 0 to 1 km storm-relative helicity.
Mixed-layer CAPE
531 J/kg
Mixed-layer CIN
-26 J/kg
Surface CAPE
1198 J/kg
Mixed-layer LCL
761 m above ground
0-6 km bulk shear
33 kt
0-1 km bulk shear
16 kt
0-1 km storm-relative helicity
83 m²/s²
0-3 km storm-relative helicity
86 m²/s²
Significant tornado parameter
0.2
Supercell composite
1.6
0-3 km lapse rate
5.3 K/km

Open this sounding in Storm Lab

The surface observations

Ravenna (29G), 26 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

Time (UTC)Temp (°F)Dew point (°F)WindGust (kt)Pressure (mb)Weather
00:00 UTC

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

The radar

The Cleveland radar (KCLE), 79 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:31 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.

This ground now

The live radar over the trackEvery 2006 tornado in OhioEvery tornado in Ohio since 1950Warnings in force in Ohio nowThe forecast where you are

The other tornadoes of July 4, 2006

4 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

DateTimeRatingWherePath (mi)Width (yd)DeathsInjuriesDamage
July 43:45 PM CDTF0San Patricio, TX0.530
July 48:15 PM EDTF0Portage, OH1.525
July 47:55 PM MDTF0Arapahoe, CO0.150
July 48:21 PM MDTF0Elbert, CO0.150

What this means

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.

Sources

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