EF1 tornado, Fowler to Nutwood, Ohio, August 17, 2017

1. EF065 to 85 mph

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

2. EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

August 17, 2017

Touchdown

7:11 PM EDT (23:11 UTC)

Lifted

7:19 PM EDT (23:19 UTC)

On the ground

8 minutes

Path length

1.0 miles (1.7 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000

County

Trumbull County

Touchdown point

41.312, -80.656

Lift-off point

41.320, -80.639

Record number

1708171711-01

6 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS CLE, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 90 mph.

• start of wooded tree damage
• rough end point of the tornado, last visible damage found on the trajectory of the tornado path. A few large limbs blown down, with patio furniture blown about.
• start point, few trees snapped/uprooted, skirting around mobile home removed, mobile home shifted 4" off foundation w/ windows blown in.
• Est. 200+ trees uprooted or snapped. Most of the snapped trees were hollowed out or rotted. The uprooted trees had shallower root balls (est. 1-2' in depth) with the largest tree est. 125' tall. This point represents the center of the tornado path, where tree damage was layed out in a convergent pattern.

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

A warm front lifted across northern Ohio on August 17th as an area of low pressure moved across the northern Great Lakes. A cluster of thunderstorms developed in advance of this front and moved across northern Ohio during the afternoon and early evening hours. One of thunderstorms produced a tornado in Trumbull County. A second storm produced a funnel cloud nearby. Most of the tornado damage was from downed trees.

A funnel cloud formed east of Warren from a thunderstorm moving northeast across Trumbull County. The funnel was observed for many minutes and passed a few miles north of the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport. A tornado eventually developed and touched down just northwest of the intersection of State Routes 193 and 305 near Fowler. A mobile home near that location was knocked off it's foundation and lost some metal sheeting. The tornado crossed State Route 193 and moved northeast across a wooded area. Over 100 trees were snapped or uprooted in the woods with a clear convergent pattern evident. Most of the trees were hardwood and wind speeds were estimated to be at least 90 mph. The tornado lifted before reaching Sodom Hutchings Road after being on the ground for just over a mile. The damage path was more than 100 yards in width some of time. The damage was intermittent for the first portion of the tornado track.

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

6 minutes of warning. NWS CLE issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:05 UTC, 6 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:30 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:47 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 Pittsburgh radar (KPBZ), 94 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:10 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 2017 tornado in OhioEvery tornado in Ohio since 1950Warnings in force in Ohio nowThe forecast where you are

2 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.