EF0 tornado, Custar, Ohio, June 12, 2013

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

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

2. EF186 to 110 mph

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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

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

6. 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.

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

EF0

Date

June 12, 2013

Touchdown

12:25 AM EDT (04:25 UTC)

Lifted

12:27 AM EDT (04:27 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.9 miles (1.5 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$100,000

County

Wood County

Touchdown point

41.285, -83.865

Lift-off point

41.285, -83.847

Record number

1306122225-01

25 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS CLE and NWS IWX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 97 mph.

• large tree with rooted core - this marked the southern most extent of the wind damage for this event.
• weak circulation shown in the wheat field leading to the farm/barn destroyed
• rotational and circulation patterns observed in the corn field
• Barn was destroyed on this property and was on the south side of the tornado touchdown point. Debris deposited northeast of location and along and south of the tornado path.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A strong frontal system remained nearly stationary across the Upper Ohio Valley during the evening hours of June 12th. Scattered showers and thunderstorms developed across northern Ohio early in the evening. The storms became more numerous as the evening progressed. Many of the storms became severe. Dozens of reports of large hail and damaging winds were reported. Scattered power outages resulted from these storms.||A second round of strong thunderstorms occurred after midnight. A long lived bowing line of storms or Derecho developed to the west of the area. This line crossed the I-75 corridor just after midnight and then raced east across the remainder of the northern Ohio during the early morning hours. Wind gusts of 60 to 70 mph occurred across most of the area resulting in considerable damage and scattered power outages. A weak tornado also occurred in Wood County as the line moved through.

A tornado touched down about a mile west of Custar and then traveled east. The tornado lifted as it entered the west end of Custar. Some trees were toppled along the damage path and two homes and a garage in Custar sustained roof damage. Damaging straight line winds accompanied the tornado and downed trees elsewhere in Custar. The tornado had a damage path nearly a mile in length and up to 50 yards in width. This tornado was rated an EF0.

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

17 minutes of warning. NWS CLE issued a tornado warning for this county at 04:08 UTC, 17 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 04:45 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 21:02 UTC and running to 06:00 UTC.

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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:54 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 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.

The Northern Indiana radar (KIWX), 154 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:25 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.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2013 tornado in OhioEvery tornado in Ohio since 1950Warnings in force in Ohio nowThe forecast where you are

20 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

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.