EF1 tornado, Decliff to Meeker, Ohio, August 12, 2023

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 12, 2023

Touchdown

1:13 PM EDT (17:13 UTC)

Lifted

1:14 PM EDT (17:14 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$23,000

County

Marion County

Touchdown point

40.642, -83.363

Lift-off point

40.642, -83.361

Record number

2308121113-01

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

• Southern half of roof blown off of farm building with debris into field to the east. Large tree branches snapped north and east of house.

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

An occluded surface low meandered near the eastern shore of Lake Superior during the late morning through early evening of the 12th. Simultaneously, the trailing cold front swept southeastward from southeastern Lower MI and northern IN to central Lake Erie and north-central/west-central portions of OH. Multiple multicell and supercell thunderstorms occurred along and ahead of the cold front in northern OH. These storms produced severe hail, damaging convective gusts, and two tornadoes in a warm sector comprised of moderate to strong MUCAPE and effective bulk shear, respectively, mixed-layer lifting condensation levels near 750 to 1500 meters AGL, and strong surface-based effective storm-relative helicity near 150 meters squared per second squared.

A brief EF1 tornado with estimated peak winds of 90 mph occurred just south of the intersection of OH-309 and Dry Lane Road North in the La Rue area. As the tornado moved east-northeastward, it caused damage at a residential property along Dry Lane Road North. A portion of an outbuilding's roof was torn-off and several trees were damaged.

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

15 minutes of warning. NWS CLE issued a tornado warning for this county at 16:58 UTC, 15 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 17:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 16:51 UTC and running to 22:59 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 16:23 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.

Kenton (I95), 24 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Cincinnati radar (KILN), 141 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 17:10 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 2023 tornado in OhioEvery tornado in Ohio since 1950Warnings in force in Ohio nowThe forecast where you are

15 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.