EF1 tornado, Bloomfield to Chandlersville, 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

9:20 PM EDT (01:20 UTC)

Lifted

9:21 PM EDT (01:21 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.9 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$10,000

County

Muskingum County

Touchdown point

39.885, -81.848

Lift-off point

39.892, -81.844

Record number

2404021920-01

43 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.

• Barn roof half off. Tossed about 400 feet into a fence.
• Fairview road trees snapped in woods
• Airplane hangar blown out where garage opening was
• Two snapped electrical poles at the base

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

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-0 tornado, with winds |peaking near 85 mph, tracked through central Muskingum County on |the evening of April 2, 2024. The length was about 1.21 miles and |the max width was estimated to be 50 yards. This tornado was |associated with the same circulation that initially produced a |tornado about 2 miles north of North Zanesville, OH near the Green|Valley Golf Club. ||Weak tornado damage was noted along Bethel Road and New Hope |Road, with a few trees snapped and roof damage to outbuildings. |All the structures that were damaged were in open fields. ||The tornado lifted around 8:51 pm. However, there was a new |circulation in Guernsey County, OH along Cowden Road that produced|EF-1 damage.

An NWS damage survey confirmed that an EF-1 tornado, with winds |peaking near 105 mph, tracked through southeastern Muskingum |County on the evening of April 2, 2024. The length was about 0.59 |miles with an estimated max width of 150 yards. ||Tree damage was first observed just south of Coon Ridge Road and |Wonderland Road inside the Blue Rock State Forest. The tornado |continued north where it crossed Coon Ridge Road, entered a field,|and resulted in the loss of metal roofing panels of a barn. It |then re-entered the forest, making a turn to the northeast before |causing a sizable blowdown of snapped and uprooted trees in a |ravine. This is where peak intensity and maximum width were |reached. The tornado then quickly lifted before just before |crossing Coon Ridge Road.

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

12 minutes of warning. NWS PBZ issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:08 UTC, 12 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:28 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 23:22 UTC and running to 01:57 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 01:16 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 Pittsburgh radar (KPBZ), 156 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:19 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.