EF1 tornado, Kingsway to Vickery, Ohio, June 15, 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

June 15, 2023

Touchdown

6:57 PM EDT (22:57 UTC)

Lifted

6:58 PM EDT (22:58 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$15,000

County

Sandusky County

Touchdown point

41.449, -83.156

Lift-off point

41.450, -83.153

Record number

2306151657-01

4 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 95 mph.

• One pine tree snapped, a couple pine trees uprooted.

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

A cold front moved into northwest Ohio the evening of Thursday, June 15. A weak surface low pressure developed along this front over southern Michigan earlier in the day and moved southeast across the western tip of Lake Erie during the evening. A warm front extended southeast of this low pressure along the western Lake Erie shoreline and then down towards central Ohio. Thunderstorms erupted along the cold front near Toledo just before 6:00 PM and moved southeast towards east-central Ohio over the coming hours. Enhanced vertical wind shear associated with the low pressure and warm front allowed storms to rotate amidst an unstable environment. A particularly intense supercell (rotating thunderstorm) developed near the Ohio/Michigan border just north of Toledo and tracked across parts of Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky, Erie, Huron, Seneca, Richland, Ashland, and Wayne Counties. This supercell was responsible for nine tornadoes and numerous instances of large hail, with hail to at least the size of tennis balls reported near Toledo and multiple reports of hail to golf ball sized or larger as the storm continued southeast. Heavy rainfall from this supercell also produced flash flooding across Huron County. Storms gradually congealed into a line that produced some hail and straight-line convective wind damage into east central Ohio.

A brief tornado began near the intersection of Township Road 153 and Township Road 146 in Rice Township. As the tornado tracked east-northeastward, several trees were downed and two of these trees damaged a home. Another tree was snapped at its base. The tornado ended just east of the home. This tornado was given a peak rating of EF1 with estimated peak winds of 95 mph.

A brief tornado began along County Road 247, just east-northeast of Vickery, where it destroyed an outbuilding's metal roof. As the tornado moved east-southeastward across Schertz Ditch and continued into a tree line, the metal roof was thrown into a field and shingles from a home were thrown back toward the west before the tornado dissipated. This tornado was an EF0 with estimated peak winds of 80 mph.

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

12 minutes of warning. NWS CLE issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:45 UTC, 12 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:15 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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:57 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), 108 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:54 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

31 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.