EF0 tornado, Massillon to Sandyville, Ohio, April 7, 2020

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

April 7, 2020

Touchdown

12:10 AM EDT (04:10 UTC)

Lifted

12:31 AM EDT (04:31 UTC)

On the ground

21 minutes

Path length

15.7 miles (25.3 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Counties

Stark and Tuscarawas counties

Touchdown point

40.795, -81.556

Lift-off point

40.635, -81.348

Record number

2004072210-01

21 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 107 mph.

• damage path wide 100 yards

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

A surface low moved from west-central Lower Michigan during the evening of April 7th to near Long Island by daybreak on April 8th. The accompanying cold front extended west-southwestward from the low and swept south-southeastward through northern Ohio during the early morning of the 8th. Along and ahead of the cold front, clusters of thunderstorms, including supercells, formed over southern Lake Michigan and southern Lower Michigan by the early evening of the 7th. These storms grew upscale into a squall line, which then moved generally southeastward through northern Ohio from late evening of the 7th through the first hour of the 8th. Additional more discrete thunderstorms, including supercells, developed ahead of the squall line. These storms encountered primarily moderate instability amidst strong effective bulk shear within the warm sector. In addition to numerous reports of damaging straight-line winds and severe hail, three QLCS tornadoes occurred within the squall line and affected portions of northeast Ohio.

Broad ridging was in place across the Mississippi Valley on the morning of the 7th, with the Upper Ohio Valley region experiencing WNW flow aloft. After morning showers and thunderstorms moved across the area due to a warm front, the upper level flow regime brought an elevated mixed layer (EML) into the region during the afternoon, capping convection during the afternoon and early evening hours. ||Convective clusters over Michigan during the evening congealed into a mesoscale convective system (MCS) and raced across Lake Erie, arriving in the NWS Pittsburgh forecast area shortly before midnight. Steep mid-level lapse rates thanks to the EML allow for a few large hail reports initially. However, the main impact of the system would be from wind. Surface temperatures surged into the low to mid 60s ahead of the line on gusty southwest winds, resulting in surface CAPE of 1000 J/kg and a significant curving/lengthening of the hodograph. With the boundary layer no longer decoupled, strong ambient mid-level flow combined with highly efficient evaporational cooling in the convective downdrafts allowed substantial downdraft CAPE to be realized with surface wind gusts exceeding 70 mph observed and evident over a wide area given the volume of wind damage reports. Embedded vortices in the quasi-linear convective system also led to five tornadoes in the EF0/EF1 range during this event across the region, with three of these impacting east-central Ohio. Numerous instances of tree and structural damage were observed across the region.

This EF0 tornado began at the intersection of Lincoln Way W and 26th Street NW in Massillon, where hardwood trees were uprooted. As the tornado moved southeastward, ten turbine fans were ripped off the roof of a warehouse at Shearer's Stark Distribution Center on Phoenix Avenue SE in Massillon. Farther along the tornado's path, it uprooted trees and destroyed a barn at a farm along Kemary Avenue SW, about 0.9 miles south-southwest of Richville. The tornado progressed southeastward toward East Sparta. As it approached the town, softwood trees were uprooted along Downing Street SW, about 0.2 miles east-southeast of Briggle Avenue SW. In addition, a home lost a portion of its roof about 0.25 miles west-northwest of the intersection of Ridge Avenue SE and Farber Street SE. Afterward, the EF0 tornado veered toward the south-southeast. Softwood trees were uprooted along Chestnut Avenue SE, about 0.5 miles south of downtown East Sparta. The tornado uprooted more softwood trees about 0.1 miles north-northwest of the intersection of OH 800 and Steele Drive NE before moving into Tuscarawas County. No fatalities or injuries occurred.

This is a continuation of the tornado that impacted East Sparta in|Stark County.||The tornado resulted in damage to several modular homes and|brought down numerous hardwood and softwood trees in the Sandy|Valley Estates allotment along Route 800. It then moved across SR183|damaging two additional structures before moving toward Sandy Valley|High School, where it toppled additional hardwood trees and damaged|structures near the ballfields.||This is the 16th tornado for Tuscarawas County since the 1880s for which|we were notified of damage. The most recent tornado prior to this occurred|on April 14th, 2019 when another EF0 tornado was observed.

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

25 minutes of warning. NWS CLE issued a tornado warning for this county at 03:45 UTC, 25 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 04:30 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 01:08 UTC and running to 06:05 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:49 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 Cleveland radar (KCLE), 85 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:12 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 2020 tornado in OhioEvery tornado in Ohio since 1950Warnings in force in Ohio nowThe forecast where you are

6 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.