EF1 tornado, Crown City to Swan Creek, Ohio, April 2, 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 2, 2024

Touchdown

10:40 AM EDT (14:40 UTC)

Lifted

10:41 AM EDT (14:41 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000

County

Gallia County

Touchdown point

38.617, -82.242

Lift-off point

38.617, -82.233

Record number

2404020840-01

27 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS RLX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 105 mph.

• New scoreboard blown onto bleachers
• Metal roof was blown to the E.
• Concrete block wall attached to mall exterior blown apart.
• Scattered hardwoods uprooted on both sides of I64 with an orientation to the northeast.

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

Multiple rounds of showers and thunderstorms moved across parts of Ohio at the start of the month of April. An intense squall line raced through portions of southeast Ohio on the late morning of April 2nd, which spawned four tornadoes and caused numerous other locations to observe straight-line wind damage. Additional severe thunderstorms occurred late in the afternoon and into the evening of April 2nd, producing additional tornadoes and wind damage centered within southern and eastern Ohio. ||The multiple rounds of rain produced numerous instances of flash flooding around Ohio. Widespread rainfall amounts of 2 to 4 inches had fallen across southern and eastern Ohio, with localized amounts near 6 inches observed. Runoff from this rainfall, coupled with heavy rain occurring in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, caused moderate to major flooding along the Ohio River. Moderate flooding was observed first along the lower Muskingum River, with both McConnellsville and Beverly having surpassed their respective moderate flood stage. Drainage into the Ohio River eventually sent the river into flood on April 4th from north to south, with subsequent crests occurring into April 5th. Locations along the upper reaches experienced moderate flooding. In addition, Marietta exceeded major flood stage. Overall impacts were significant with numerous roads and structures observing flooding along the West Virginia side of the river.

An EF1 tornado with maximum winds of 95 miles per hour first touched down along Hannan Trace Road about 3 miles northeast of Crown City. Several large hardwood trees were observed uprooted in a converging pattern within a narrow ravine at the 1650 block of Hannan Trace Road. This damage extended northeastward out of the ravine and onto the nearby hillside where some damage to barns occurred from fallen trees.||In addition, the roof and exterior walls of a wood frame commercial warehouse were blown off to the south of the path along Hannan Trace Road. Given the location of this particular damage and orientation, this likely occurred from rear flank downdraft winds. ||The exact start and end path to the tornado is unknown given the rural area with which it occurred and lack of a road network within the theoretical damage track.

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

13 minutes of warning. NWS RLX issued a tornado warning for this county at 14:27 UTC, 13 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 15:00 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 12:32 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 Charleston,WV radar (KRLX), 56 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 14:41 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

68 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 69 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.