EF0 tornado, New Paris to Hamburg, Ohio, March 31, 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

March 31, 2023

Touchdown

12:47 AM EDT (04:47 UTC)

Lifted

12:49 AM EDT (04:49 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

2.6 miles (4.2 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$200,000

County

Preble County

Touchdown point

39.862, -84.775

Lift-off point

39.879, -84.731

Record number

2303312247-01

8 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.

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

Showers and thunderstorms overspread the area during the late evening hours ahead of a strong low pressure system and an associated cold front moving through the Ohio Valley.

The first sign of tornadic damage appeared near the intersection of Hawley Mills Road and New Paris Twins Road, where uprooted trees and a significant loss of roof panels from a barn occurred. The tornado continued to uproot trees off of New Paris Twins Road and caused some walls of an older barn building to collapse before traveling further northeastward through some open fields.||The next points of damage were observed near the intersection of New Paris Twins Road and Rawley Road. Here, multiple barns had an observed loss of metal roof panels, with one barn in particular showing more extensive damage with some bent/collapsed barn doors. One of the residential homes also displayed some paneling damage on the back side of the building.||Near the end of its path, the tornado uprooted multiple trees and caused another barn door to cave inwards. The final damage noted from this tornado occurred off of Gettysburg Darke Rd, where significant loss of a barn roof occurred and pieces of the sheet metal were tossed into the yard and nearby trees. The tornado is believed to have dissipated shortly after this location.

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 tornado watch, issued at 03:09 UTC and running to 05:41 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 01:04 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), 94 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:48 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

126 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 127 of them

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.