EF1 tornado, Wakatomika, Ohio, May 7, 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 7, 2024

Touchdown

12:17 AM EDT (04:17 UTC)

Lifted

12:19 AM EDT (04:19 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.1 miles (0.1 km)

Path width

197 yards (180 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$100,000

County

Coshocton County

Touchdown point

40.178, -82.008

Lift-off point

40.178, -82.006

Record number

2405072217-01

24 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ILN and NWS PBZ, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 107 mph.

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

Potent low pressure tracked across the Upper Midwest from May 7th into May 8th, pushing an occluded boundary across the Upper Ohio Valley. Strong warm and moist advection kept conditions favorable for convection into the overnight hours, with high levels of shear and a surface trough also supporting storm development. Cyclic supercell structures supported higher-end straight line wind damage, as well as three tornadoes in eastern Ohio. One of these ended up being one of the stronger and more significant tornadoes in the region's recent history, a high-end EF2 that ultimately tracked across 15 miles and three states.

The same severe thunderstorm that produced an earlier tornado in Muskingum County then produced another brief EF1 tornado as it moved east-northeast into southern Coshocton County. Damage was noted to a home, outbuilding, and trees just off of County Road 439. It's believed that the tornado touched down very close to the house itself with the bulk of the damage occurring on the northeast side of the house, opposite of the parent thunderstorm's southwest to northeast motion. The outbuilding had its roof removed and most of its walls completely collapsed save for part of one side that remained standing. The tornado removed the entire metal roof throwing it in pieces several hundred yards downstream into a field as well as upstream where two pieces were wrapped around the top of a tree. While most walls remained standing, the back side of the home was torn off and laid on the ground. It was this damage that the highest EF1 wind speed of 105 |mph was observed. Insulation from this part of the home was thrown all over the property and plastered on all sides of the home. Several healthy softwood trees were uprooted in the backyard.

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 tornado watch, issued at 01:17 UTC and running to 05:02 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 01:11 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), 138 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:16 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

52 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.