EF1 tornado, North Robinson to Middletown, Ohio, July 29, 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

July 29, 2023

Touchdown

4:58 AM EDT (08:58 UTC)

Lifted

5:06 AM EDT (09:06 UTC)

On the ground

8 minutes

Path length

6.5 miles (10.4 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$230,000

County

Crawford County

Touchdown point

40.804, -82.902

Lift-off point

40.783, -82.781

Record number

2307290258-01

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 EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 105 mph.

• 3 Silos sustained damage near County Road 35 and State Route 598
• Numerous trees snapped and uprooted. 12 homes sustained moderate damage and one was destroyed around Lake Galion.

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

Northern Ohio remained in a very humid air mass and along the northwestern flank of the Bermuda-Azores subtropical surface high pressure ridge during the late morning of the 28th into the 29th before a cold front swept southeastward across the region during the late morning through early afternoon of the 29th. Behind the front, a secondary trough axis moved generally southward across northern OH during the afternoon through early evening before another ridge built from the Canadian Prairies and northern Great Plains during the rest of the 29th. ||Ahead of the cold front, northern OH resided in an environment comprised of moderate to strong effective bulk shear and primarily moderate to strong MUCAPE. Along and ahead of the cold front, multiple rounds of multicell thunderstorms persisted generally eastward across northern OH. These storms produced sporadic straight-line convective wind damage in addition to a mesovortex-related tornado near Bucyrus, OH.

This tornado began along Parcher Road, just north of County Route 13, where the tornado caused significant damage to a barn on the east side of Bucyrus. As the tornado traveled east-southeastward, it uprooted and snapped numerous trees. Twelve homes sustained moderate damage and one home was destroyed by downed trees and the tornado itself. The tornado also damaged three silos at Sunrise Cooperative, Inc. before ending very soon thereafter on the west side of Crestline. This tornado had peak intensity of EF1 with estimated peak winds of 105 mph.

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.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 06:54 UTC and running to 09:53 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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:48 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), 107 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 08:54 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

7 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.