Unrated tornado, West Independence to Alvada, 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 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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

March 14, 2024

Touchdown

7:09 PM EDT (23:09 UTC)

Lifted

7:12 PM EDT (23:12 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.3 miles (2.1 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Counties

Hancock and Seneca counties

Touchdown point

41.028, -83.422

Lift-off point

41.026, -83.397

Record number

2403141709-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS CLE, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry.

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.

Based on several social media photos and videos, eyewitness reports, and law enforcement reports, an intermittent tornado of unknown intensity began just southwest of the intersection of Township Roads 6, 7, 11, and 57 in far-eastern Hancock County, southwest of Alvada. The tornado tracked east-southeastward and entered Seneca County after crossing Township Road 11. Maximum width was estimated because no damage path was found.

Based on several social media photos and videos, eyewitness reports, and law enforcement reports, an intermittent tornado of unknown intensity tracked east-southeastward from Hancock County into Seneca County before dissipating just southeast of Township Road 6 and U.S. Route 23. This tornado occurred about two-miles south of Alvada. The maximum width was estimated because no damage path was found.

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

24 minutes of warning. NWS CLE issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:45 UTC, 24 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 21:15 UTC and running to 00:43 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.

The Cleveland radar (KCLE), 137 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 23:08 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.