EF2 tornado, New Washington to London, Ohio, March 14, 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 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

March 14, 2024

Touchdown

7:54 PM EDT (23:54 UTC)

Lifted

8:13 PM EDT (00:13 UTC)

On the ground

19 minutes

Path length

10.3 miles (16.6 km)

Path width

250 yards (229 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$450,000

Counties

Crawford and Richland counties

Touchdown point

40.977, -82.836

Lift-off point

40.963, -82.639

Record number

2403141754-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS CLE, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 62 mph.

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

A cold front drifted south-southeastward from near the northern shore of Lake Erie and southern Lower MI to near the southern shore of Lake Erie and far-northwestern OH during the evening of the 14th as a warm and relatively-moist sector preceded the front in northern OH. Multicell and supercell thunderstorms occurred along and ahead of the front, and persisted generally eastward. Severe hail, some large, and isolated straight-line convective wind damage occurred as the storms encountered weak to moderate MUCAPE, relatively-steep midlevel lapse rates near 7C/km, and moderate to strong effective bulk shear. Three separate supercells spawned a tornado amidst favorably-strong, surface-based effective storm relative helicity and favorably-low mixed layer lifting condensation levels less than 1500 meters AGL. The training supercell thunderstorms with heavy rainfall produced isolated flash flooding as well.

An EF2 tornado with estimated peak winds of 120 mph impacted Crawford County. This tornado began along Marsh Road, just northeast of New Washington, and tracked east-southeastward. The tornado damaged trees and homes as it moved across Auburn Township and then intensified as it tracked along Kenestrick Road, where multiple residences and outbuildings were damaged. The tornado destroyed a single wide manufactured home and an outbuilding before moving into Richland County.

This EF2 tornado with estimated peak winds of 120 mph entered Richland County from Crawford County and tracked east-southeastward across southern portions of the Plymouth area. The tornado tracked near West and Opdyke Roads, and crossed OH-98, OH-61, and OH-191 before ending near Willet Road, between Opdyke Road and Richards Road. Extensive damage to homes, outbuildings, trees, and power poles occurred before the tornado dissipated.

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

13 minutes of warning. NWS CLE issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:41 UTC, 13 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 21:15 UTC and running to 01:32 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:37 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.

Mansfield (MFD), 25 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Cleveland radar (KCLE), 88 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:51 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

24 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.