Tornadoes · United States · Ohio · 2007
EF0 tornado, Macon, Ohio, April 26, 2007
This EF0 tornado ran 0.5 miles across Brown County on April 26, 2007, touching down at 6:55 PM EDT and reaching 50 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $50,000 of property damage.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
EF2111 to 135 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.
EF3136 to 165 mph
Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
EF5over 200 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.
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
- EF0
- Date
- April 26, 2007
- Touchdown
- 6:55 PM EDT (22:55 UTC)
- Lifted
- 6:58 PM EDT (22:58 UTC)
- On the ground
- 3 minutes
- Path length
- 0.5 miles (0.8 km)
- Path width
- 50 yards (46 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $50,000
- County
- Brown County
- Touchdown point
- 38.980, -83.707
- Lift-off point
- 38.980, -83.707
- Record number
- 0704261655-01
What the Weather Service recorded
Scattered thunderstorms developed across south central Ohio ahead of a cold front during the evening. An intense supercell developed in northeast Kentucky and crossed the Ohio River into south central Ohio. The supercell traversed Brown, Adams, Pike and Ross counties and produced three tornadoes.
A tornado touched down near Tri County Road and continued towards the intersection of Melblanc and Steele Roads in northeast Brown County. Five to ten trees were either uprooted or were snapped off towards the tops, with additional large limbs and branches knocked down from other trees. A trampoline was picked up and moved, and a large front porch on a home along Steele Road was torn off with the roof tossed several yards. Large pieces of siding and roof from at least one barn were carried a hundred yards. This tornado was rated EF-0 with top wind speeds around 80 mph.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
24 minutes of warning. NWS ILN issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:31 UTC, 24 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:00 UTC.
The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 18:27 UTC and running to 02:00 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18:27 UTC | 02:00 UTC | Tornado Watch | ILN |
| 22:31 UTC | 23:00 UTC | Tornado Warning | ILN |
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 forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:01 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.
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.
Cncnati-Daytn, OH (KILN), 12:00Z
10.9 hours before the tornado, 51 km from the path. April 26, 2007.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 215 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -27 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 0 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 666 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 26 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 28 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 58 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 129 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 4.9 K/km
Cncnati-Daytn, OH (KILN), 00:00Z
1.1 hours after it, 51 km from the path. April 27, 2007.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 599 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -15 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 882 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 829 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 43 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 25 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 159 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 190 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.5
- Supercell composite
- 3.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.8 K/km
The radar
The Cincinnati radar (KILN), 50 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:55 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.
What was reported nearby
Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Report | Where | County | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22:50 UTC | TORNADO | 2 Nw Winchester | Brown, OH | BARN KNOCKED OVER. FRONT PORCH TORN OFF. COUPLE OF TREES DOWNED. |
| 23:25 UTC | TORNADO | 1 Se Peebles | Adams, OH | ROOF AND FRONT PORCH BALCONY COMPLETELY REMOVED FROM A HOME NEAR THE INTERSECTION OF STATE ROUTE 32 AND STEAM FURNACE ROAD. THE WALLS OF A BARN COLLAPSED AND SOME MINOR DAMAGE TO AN AWNING OCCURRED AT A NEARBY NURSERY. |
| 23:51 UTC | HAIL 1 | Highland | Highland, OH | |
| 23:58 UTC | HAIL 0.88 | 3 S Milford | Clermont, OH | |
| 00:02 UTC | FLOOD | 4 W Piketon | Pike, OH | HIGH WATER IN DITCHES. WATER FLOWING 1 INCH DEEP OVER ROAD. |
| 00:02 UTC | HAIL 0.25 | 4 W Piketon | Pike, OH | COVERING GROUND |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2007 tornado in OhioEvery tornado in Ohio since 1950Warnings in force in Ohio nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of April 26, 2007
10 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 26 | 2:58 PM CDT | EF0 | Will, IL | 3.2 | 5 | $100,000 | ||
| April 26 | 3:50 PM CDT | EF0 | Cumberland, TN | 7.9 | 50 | $20,000 | ||
| April 26 | 4:08 PM CDT | EF1 | LaPorte, IN | 0.5 | 100 | $40,000 | ||
| April 26 | 4:18 PM CDT | EF1 | LaPorte, IN | 0.3 | 450 | 1 | $40,000 | |
| April 26 | 7:12 PM EDT | EF1 | Berrien, MI | 1.2 | 50 | $10,000 | ||
| April 26 | 7:23 PM EDT | EF1 | Adams, OH | 1.5 | 50 | $70,000 | ||
| April 26 | 7:50 PM EDT | EF1 | Fleming, KY | 3.6 | 200 | $100,000 | ||
| April 26 | 7:52 PM EDT | EF1 | Claiborne, TN | 4.6 | 75 | 7 | $425,000 | |
| April 26 | 8:25 PM EDT | EF0 | Pike, OH | 1.0 | 30 | $25,000 | ||
| April 26 | 7:02 PM MDT | EF0 | Arapahoe, CO | 0.1 | 50 |
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.