EF0 tornado, Harrisburg to Orient, Ohio, February 27, 2023

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

February 27, 2023

Touchdown

4:03 PM EST (21:03 UTC)

Lifted

4:05 PM EST (21:05 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.4 miles (2.2 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$150,000

County

Pickaway County

Touchdown point

39.789, -83.177

Lift-off point

39.802, -83.158

Record number

2302271503-01

17 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ILN, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 85 mph.

• Several uprooted trees near the start of the path

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

Showers and thunderstorms developed ahead of a low pressure system moving through the Ohio Valley.

The tornado began south of Darby Creek Road in the Fox Lair Farms neighborhood where two single-wide manufactured homes were flipped on their sides. Minor damage continued through the neighborhood before the tornado crossed Darby Creek Road, damaging a single property. On this property, the garage roof was lifted off the structure and landed on the other side of Darby Creek Road. ||The tornado likely crossed Big Darby Creek, however, damage could not be verified due to the lack of accessible roads. ||The next area of damage was observed toward the town of Orient, where multiple abandoned structures were damaged at the Pickaway Correctional Institution south of town. This damage was verified through video shared on social media. Most of the structures had large amounts of roof panel loss which was scattered across a nearby field. ||The only signs of the tornado in the town of Orient was scattered building insulation found in trees. It is believed that the tornado likely dissipated as it entered Orient.

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

6 minutes of warning. NWS ILN issued a tornado warning for this county at 20:57 UTC, 6 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 21:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 18:29 UTC and running to 23:00 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:40 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 Cincinnati radar (KILN), 70 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:02 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.