EF1 tornado, Bucyrus, Ohio, April 17, 2024

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

April 17, 2024

Touchdown

4:06 PM EDT (20:06 UTC)

Lifted

4:11 PM EDT (20:11 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

3.5 miles (5.6 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$1.0 million

County

Crawford County

Touchdown point

40.798, -83.001

Lift-off point

40.818, -82.939

Record number

2404171406-01

At the surface, an occluded low drifted from northeastern WI to the central Upper Peninsula of MI during the early afternoon through early evening of the 17th. Simultaneously, the low's attendant warm front drifted eastward across central Lake Erie and far-western PA, and the low's attendant cold front swept eastward from near the northwest OH/northeast IN border and central IN to near the OH/PA border, which caused the warm sector to shrink with time. Scattered multicell thunderstorms and a few supercell thunderstorms developed along and ahead of the cold front, and persisted generally eastward across northern OH as the storms encountered weak to moderate MUCAPE and DCAPE, respectively, and moderate to strong effective bulk shear. This environment allowed storms to produce damaging hail and straight-line convective wind gusts, respectively. Three tornadoes also occurred amidst favorably-low mixed layer lifting condensation levels less than 1500 meters AGL and favorably-strong, surface-based effective storm-relative helicity.

An EF1 tornado with estimated peak winds of 110 mph occurred in Bucyrus. The tornado began near the bend of Kerstetter Road and West Southern Avenue. The tornado yielded 80 mph winds with damage to the roof of a home on West Southern Avenue. The tornado tracked northeastward and produced scattered damage in the form of broken tree limbs. The tornado continued northeastward across the Sandusky River and intensified with winds up to 100 mph. Several large hardwood trees were uprooted, a garage was destroyed, a small trailer rolled, three chimneys were blown down, several large trees were uprooted, and a shed was destroyed near the intersection of Ridge Avenue and Wise Street. The tornado continued northeastward with maximum winds of 110 mph while moving a house off its foundation. The tornado also caused roof damage to the post office and a roof collapse at a convenience store in and around downtown Bucyrus. In addition, an abandoned plant wall was blown out and several antennas were bent. The tornado continued northeastward, downed several large trees across a golf course, and damaged a storage shed. Several tree limbs were broken as the tornado tracked farther northeastward and weakened. The tornado finally ended along Beechgrove Road northeast of U.S. Highway 30.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 16:21 UTC and running to 21:00 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 19:58 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), 115 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:06 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 2024 tornado in OhioEvery tornado in Ohio since 1950Warnings in force in Ohio nowThe forecast where you are

4 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.