Tornadoes · United States · Ohio · 2019
EF0 tornado, New Westville, Ohio, June 15, 2019
This EF0 tornado ran 1.7 miles across Preble County on June 15, 2019, touching down at 9:56 PM EDT and reaching 35 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $40,000 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
- June 15, 2019
- Touchdown
- 9:56 PM EDT (01:56 UTC)
- Lifted
- 9:59 PM EDT (01:59 UTC)
- On the ground
- 3 minutes
- Path length
- 1.7 miles (2.7 km)
- Path width
- 35 yards (32 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $40,000
- County
- Preble County
- Touchdown point
- 39.758, -84.806
- Lift-off point
- 39.772, -84.780
- Record number
- 1906151956-01
What the Weather Service recorded
Severe thunderstorms developed on a stalled frontal boundary draped across the region.
The tornado first touched down on Weist Road, east of Route 227. Numerous trees up to one foot in diameter were knocked down. The most significant damage was to a large tree limb which was blown down and punctured the roof of a house. In addition, two large barn doors were blown in and a side barn door was ripped off and blown to the north-northwest about 20 yards. A few windows and sections of the barn were also damaged.||The tornado appears to have moved northeast across a field, then produced additional damage to trees at a residence on Wolverton Road, just south of Paddock Road. The tornado dissipated shortly afterwards.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.
The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 00:40 UTC and running to 03:08 UTC.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18:00 UTC | 15:12 UTC | Flash Flood Watch | ILN |
| 00:40 UTC | 03:08 UTC | Tornado Watch | ILN |
| 01:43 UTC | 02:15 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm 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 01:46 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), 00:00Z
1.9 hours before the tornado, 93 km from the path. June 16, 2019.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 172 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -36 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 423 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1021 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 48 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 30 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 290 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 374 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.3
- Supercell composite
- 1.5
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.3 K/km
The radar
The Cincinnati radar (KILN), 92 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:56 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01:56 UTC | TORNADO 0 | 2 E Krid Richmond Apt | Preble, OH | NWS STORM SURVEY CONFIRMS AN EF0 TORNADO IN RURAL WESTERN PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO WITH AN ESTIMATED PATH LENGTH OF 1.7 MILES AND WIDTH OF 35 YARDS. |
| 02:44 UTC | TSTM WND DMG | Colerain Township | Hamilton, OH | WIRES DOWN ON SNOWFLAKE LANE |
| 04:00 UTC | HEAVY RAIN 1.83 | 1 Wsw Union | Montgomery, OH | COCORAHS STATION OH-MY-34 UNION 1.0 WSW. |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2019 tornado in OhioEvery tornado in Ohio since 1950Warnings in force in Ohio nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of June 15, 2019
28 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 15 | 2:21 PM CDT | EF0 | Hardin, IA | 0.2 | 20 | $1,000 | ||
| June 15 | 2:43 PM CDT | EF0 | Macoupin, IL | 1.8 | 30 | |||
| June 15 | 2:53 PM CDT | EF0 | Stutsman, ND | 0.4 | 30 | |||
| June 15 | 4:22 PM CDT | EF0 | Holt, MO | 0.7 | 15 | |||
| June 15 | 4:29 PM CDT | EF0 | Wells, ND | 0.5 | 30 | |||
| June 15 | 5:20 PM CDT | Unrated | Castro, TX | 0.0 | 10 | |||
| June 15 | 6:29 PM EDT | EF1 | Owen, IN | 8.1 | 200 | $100,000 | ||
| June 15 | 6:48 PM EDT | EF2 | Monroe, IN | 3.7 | 400 | $110,000 | ||
| June 15 | 6:56 PM EDT | EF2 | Greene, IN | 3.5 | 400 | $250,000 | ||
| June 15 | 6:05 PM CDT | EF0 | Deuel, SD | 0.1 | 10 | |||
| June 15 | 7:26 PM EDT | EF1 | Marion, IN | 1.9 | 200 | $1.1 million | ||
| June 15 | 7:37 PM EDT | EF0 | Marion, IN | 0.9 | 100 | $30,000 | ||
| June 15 | 7:46 PM EDT | EF0 | Brown, IN | 0.6 | 50 | $1,000 | ||
| June 15 | 8:48 PM EDT | EF2 | Rush, IN | 14.5 | 200 | $275,000 | ||
| June 15 | 7:54 PM CDT | Unrated | Des Moines, IA | 0.8 | 40 | |||
| June 15 | 9:02 PM EDT | EF0 | Fayette, IN | 0.1 | 20 | $50,000 | ||
| June 15 | 8:20 PM CDT | EF2 | Des Moines, IA | 1.8 | 260 | |||
| June 15 | 8:24 PM CDT | EF2 | Des Moines, IA | 1.3 | 300 | |||
| June 15 | 8:38 PM CDT | EF1 | Mercer, IL | 0.7 | 40 | |||
| June 15 | 8:40 PM CDT | EF1 | Dewey, OK | 3.1 | 100 | $4,000 | ||
| June 15 | 9:42 PM EDT | EF1 | Union, IN | 2.1 | 35 | $35,000 | ||
| June 15 | 9:51 PM EDT | EF0 | Wayne, IN | 1.6 | 100 | 2 | $225,000 | |
| June 15 | 9:06 PM CDT | EF2 | Custer, OK | 6.3 | 500 | $80,000 | ||
| June 15 | 9:16 PM CDT | EF0 | Custer, OK | 1.3 | 300 | $2,000 | ||
| June 15 | 9:42 PM CDT | EF1 | Custer, OK | 1.5 | 400 | $50,000 | ||
| June 15 | 10:19 PM CDT | EF1 | Tazewell, IL | 2.4 | 200 | $60,000 | ||
| June 15 | 11:36 PM CDT | EF1 | McLean, IL | 1.9 | 50 | $40,000 | ||
| June 15 | 11:51 PM CDT | EF1 | Lincoln, OK | 5.2 | 50 | $60,000 |
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.