EF1 tornado, Jackson, Ohio, May 26, 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

May 26, 2024

Touchdown

3:28 PM EDT (19:28 UTC)

Lifted

3:32 PM EDT (19:32 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

3.8 miles (6.1 km)

Path width

125 yards (114 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$30,000

County

Jackson County

Touchdown point

39.029, -82.659

Lift-off point

39.053, -82.597

Record number

2405261328-01

9 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 90 mph.

• Drone footage showed swirl patterns noted in hayfield along with small branches broken out of trees.

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

On the afternoon of May 26th, a bowing line of thunderstorms pressed into southeast Ohio and caused widespread tree and power line damage. This line of convection had a history of producing strong wind gusts on the upwards of 60 miles per hour or greater as it crossed through the Tennessee Valley, and that remained the case during its journey through Ohio. Storms first pressed into Lawrence County shortly after 2 PM and sprinted northward through southeast Ohio during the late afternoon and early evening.||Strong downbursts with storms set forth extensive tree and power line damage throughout the forecast area. A few brief tornadoes spawned on the leading edge of this bowing segment that afternoon. In Ohio, an EF1 tornado touched down in Jackson County and resulted in tree damage as it tracked across the county.

A tornado touched down near Mount Zion Road where some minor tree damage occurred and swirl patterns were found in a hay field. The tornado tracked northeastward across State Route 139 where tree damage occurred and an outbuilding was damaged. It continued to skip along causing intermittent tree damage in neighborhoods north of State Route 32. The tornado knocked a tree down onto a vehicle at Hope Haven School then snapped or uprooted several trees, some onto vehicles, behind Rowdy's Smokehouse. This is where the tornado reached maximum EF1 intensity with winds estimated up to 90 miles per hour. ||The tornado then crossed Main Street, ripped a portion of the roof of of the Tractor Supply building, flipped over a parked semi trailer in the parking lot and then caused roof damage to buildings in the Senior Village. Some minor tree damage was then noted to the east of US-35 along Pattonsville Road where the tornado path ended.||This was the 8th known tornado in Jackson County and the 2nd so far this year.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 17:02 UTC and running to 21:06 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 16:40 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.

Jackson (JRO), 8 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Cincinnati radar (KILN), 111 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:30 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

69 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 70 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.