EF0 tornado, Southern Airways Arp, Ohio, September 4, 2022

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

September 4, 2022

Touchdown

5:44 PM EDT (21:44 UTC)

Lifted

5:45 PM EDT (21:45 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.1 km)

Path width

15 yards (14 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$12,000

County

Mahoning County

Touchdown point

41.021, -80.656

Lift-off point

41.022, -80.656

Record number

2209041544-01

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS CLE, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 80 mph.

• Strip mall building with storefront awnings ripped off and small portion of shingles and roofing ripped off. Debris scattered off to the south-southeast and to the north.
• Minor tree limb damage. Small wooden fence blown over. End of visible damage path.

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

A surface cold front moved south-southeastward across Lake Erie and northern Ohio during the late morning through early evening of the 4th. Isolated to scattered showers and thunderstorms occurred along and ahead of the front, within a humid warm sector comprised of weak to primarily moderate MUCAPE and moderate effective bulk shear. Radar data suggest the weak and brief tornado was spawned by a supercell after the northeastward-moving supercell experienced a constructive merger with a separate multicell thunderstorm moving north-northeastward during the early evening. Mixed layer LCL's were estimated to be near 500 to 750 meters AGL within the supercell's ambient environment, which were favorable for mesocyclonic tornadogenesis. Perhaps chaotic surface airflow associated with the merging convective cold pools enhanced low-level vertical wind shear and surface-based effective storm-relative helicity prior to tornado occurrence. The thunderstorms produced prolific rainfall rates of up to 6 per hour due to precipitable water values near 1.8 and efficient rainfall processes.

A brief EF-0 tornado with estimated peak winds of 80 mph occurred just east of Southern Park Mall in Boardman, OH based on video evidence and a NWS storm damage survey. The tornado began just east-southeast of the intersection of York Avenue and California Avenue, where a telephone pole was bent-over toward the north. As the tornado moved north-northeastward, it struck a strip mall building, where the awning and portion of the roof were ripped-off. The tornado also caused minor tree limb damage and blew-over a wooden fence before dissipating.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:58 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), 66 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:46 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 2022 tornado in OhioEvery tornado in Ohio since 1950Warnings in force in Ohio nowThe forecast where you are

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.