Tornadoes · United States · Ohio · 2024

EF1 tornado, Mantua, Ohio, April 2, 2024

This EF1 tornado ran 1.3 miles across Guernsey County on April 2, 2024, touching down at 8:57 PM EDT and reaching 75 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $400,000 of property damage.

The rating scale

Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.

  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.

The record

Rating
EF1
Date
April 2, 2024
Touchdown
8:57 PM EDT (00:57 UTC)
Lifted
8:58 PM EDT (00:58 UTC)
On the ground
1 minutes
Path length
1.3 miles (2.1 km)
Path width
75 yards (69 m)
Deaths
0
Injuries
0
Property damage
$400,000
Crop damage
$50,000
County
Guernsey County
Touchdown point
40.074, -81.718
Lift-off point
40.084, -81.697
Record number
2404021857-01

The damage survey

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

  • Fairview road trees snapped in woods
  • Two snapped electrical poles at the base
  • A number of trees snapped and uprooted.
  • A number of trees down on the woods.

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

What the Weather Service recorded

Several rounds of showers and thunderstorms prompted a widespread flash flood problems across the Ohio River Valley on April 2nd to April 3rd. The synoptic pattern across the CONUS was a slow moving and deep elongated trough over the Great Plains phasing with a ejecting trough over the Midwest that created an area of converging moisture over eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. Overall, over a span of 4 days, four to five an half inches of rain fell across the region. Not only was small tributaries impact, but the main river reached moderate flood stage. ||Along with flooding, there was a brief period of severe storms that tracked along eastern Ohio on the evening of April 2nd. A number of tornadoes touched down and were surveyed. Special soundings released by PBZ and ILN depict effective instability over eastern Ohio (1200J/kg to 1700J/kg), effective low-level shear (+50kts), and low-level helicity (300m2/s2) for rotating updrafts just before storms tracked through the area.

An NWS damage survey confirmed that an EF-1 tornado, with winds |peaking near 100 mph, tracked through north central Guernsey County|on the evening of April 2, 2024. The length of the tornado was |about 1.30 miles and the max width was estimated to be about 75 |yards. This tornado was associated with the same circulation that |initially produced 2 tornadoes in Muskingum County. One tornado in|Muskingum County was surveyed near North Zanesville, OH (EF-1) and|the other tornado was surveyed in Highland Twp (EF-0).||Peak intensity was reached as Cool Springs Road meets Cowden |Road, where a number of trees were snapped and/or uprooted. The |tornado caused minor structure damage to a barn before crossing |over a mobile home. The mobile home had partial roof damage, where|insulation was lofted into a tree. Numerous trees were snapped |and/or uprooted near the mobile home. After passing the mobile |home, the tornado lifted along a hillside.

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

The forecast that day

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 20:01 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.

What forecasters said that day

The local office's own words before the tornado touched down, as it sent them, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service text.

Hazardous weather outlook, Apr 2, 8:22 PM EDT, 35 minutes before
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The surface observations

Cambridge (CDI), 16 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

Time (UTC)Temp (°F)Dew point (°F)WindGust (kt)Pressure (mb)Weather
00:00 UTC

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The radar

The Pittsburgh radar (KPBZ), 136 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:57 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.

This ground now

The live radar over the trackEvery 2024 tornado in OhioEvery tornado in Ohio since 1950Warnings in force in Ohio nowThe forecast where you are

The other tornadoes of April 2, 2024

68 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

DateTimeRatingWherePath (mi)Width (yd)DeathsInjuriesDamage
April 24:15 AM CDTEF0Cape Girardeau, MO0.4150$5,000
April 24:46 AM CDTEF2Williamson, IL6.7250$300,000
April 24:56 AM CDTEF1Williamson, IL7.6250$205,000
April 25:05 AM CDTEF1McCracken, KY0.650$75,000
April 25:15 AM CDTEF2Saline, IL1.11002$225,000
April 25:21 AM CDTEF1Gallatin, IL1.0100$80,000
April 25:22 AM CDTEF1Gallatin, IL to IN7.4100$111,000
April 25:26 AM CDTEF1Gallatin, IL2.075$80,000
April 25:30 AM CDTEF2Posey, IL to IN11.9250$135,000
April 25:34 AM CDTEF2Union, KY6.8150$500,000
April 25:37 AM CDTEF2Posey, IN11.6250$250,000
April 25:41 AM CDTEF1Union, KY1.250$85,000
April 25:46 AM CDTEF1Union, KY0.71001$130,000
April 25:47 AM CDTEF2Vanderburgh, IN14.9250$428,000
April 25:47 AM CDTEF2Vanderburgh, IN14.9250$520,000
April 25:54 AM CDTEF1Vanderburgh, IN7.3200$230,000
April 25:57 AM CDTEF1Vanderburgh, IN5.3200$135,000
April 26:04 AM CDTEF1Warrick, IN1.6100$75,000
April 26:05 AM CDTEF1Warrick, IN8.4200$100,000
April 28:50 AM EDTEF1Washington, KY5.0125
April 28:56 AM EDTEF1Anderson, KY2.1150
April 29:11 AM EDTEF1Woodford, KY1.8300
April 29:18 AM EDTEF1Jessamine, KY0.4150
April 29:20 AM EDTEF1Bourbon, KY12.7100
April 29:30 AM EDTEF1Clark, KY1.9150
April 29:37 AM EDTEF0Bath, KY0.475$200,000
April 29:39 AM EDTEF0Bath, KY0.125$40,000
April 29:12 AM CDTEF1Greenup, KY to OH7.92501$2.1 million
April 210:21 AM EDTEF1Boyd, KY1.1250$100,000
April 210:24 AM EDTEF2Boyd, KY1.1450$200,000
April 210:26 AM EDTEF1Lawrence, OH1.1200$50,000
April 210:34 AM EDTEF1Cabell, WV0.6280$70,000
April 210:34 AM EDTEF1Lawrence, OH0.4250$10,000
April 210:39 AM EDTEF1Cabell, WV4.2200$75,000
April 210:40 AM EDTEF1Gallia, OH0.5150$50,000
April 210:54 AM EDTEF1Putnam, WV8.5200$8,000
April 210:55 AM EDTEF0Putnam, WV0.6100$10,000
April 211:02 AM EDTEF1Kanawha, WV5.0300$300,000
April 211:04 AM EDTEF2Kanawha, WV8.0300$40,000
April 211:11 AM EDTEF1Kanawha, WV5.1200$60,000
April 211:19 AM EDTEF1Kanawha, WV2.3200$80,000
April 211:21 AM EDTEF1Kanawha, WV0.8100$70,000
April 21:09 PM EDTEF1Harrison, IN3.230
April 22:02 PM CDTEF0Kankakee, IL4.650
April 22:10 PM CDTUnratedKankakee, IL0.710
April 22:30 PM CDTEF0Kankakee, IL0.525
April 24:31 PM EDTEF2Fayette, WV5.33251$100,000
April 25:20 PM EDTEF1Morgan, TN2.9150$10,000
April 24:31 PM CDTEF2Clark, IN to KY11.245032
April 25:46 PM EDTEF2Oldham, KY5.3300
April 25:52 PM EDTEF1Ohio, IN3.3100$50,000
April 25:53 PM EDTEF0Wayne, IN3.4200$200,000
April 24:55 PM CDTEF1Colbert, AL7.0750
April 25:58 PM EDTEF1Henry, KY7.8200
April 26:01 PM CDTEF0Limestone, AL1.1123
April 27:15 PM EDTEF0Bracken, KY3.2250$750,000
April 27:27 PM EDTEF1Mason, KY3.5300$300,000
April 27:46 PM EDTEF1Adams, OH7.95001$200,000
April 28:08 PM EDTEF0Licking, OH5.3150$50,000
April 28:32 PM EDTEF1Muskingum, OH8.275$950,000

All 69 of them

What this means

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.

Sources

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.