EF1 tornado, Novelty to Fullertown, Ohio, March 31, 2026

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, as surveyed

EF1, preliminary

Date

March 31, 2026

Touchdown

5:49 PM EDT (21:49 UTC)

Lifted

5:51 PM EDT (21:51 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.5 miles (2.5 km)

Path width

120 yards (110 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Geauga County

Touchdown point

41.493, -81.308

Lift-off point

41.491, -81.280

Highest wind the damage implies

100 mph

Surveyed by

NWS CLE

The office's name for it

Geauga County Tornado

Survey last edited

April 2, 2026

Record number

None yet. SPC numbers 2026 in the spring of 2027.

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS CLE, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 100 mph.

• About 75-100 yards. Shed also displaced from its original location.
• Large pine trees downed; one onto a house with no structural damage. The tree that fell onto the house was rotted. A power pole was snapped in half and that damage appeared to be from the tornadic winds themselves.
• Large pine trees downed, one onto a house which caused some damage to the roof and gutter. Trees appeared to be healthy.

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

At the surface, a cold front drifted southeastward across Lake Ontario, southern ON, and southern Lower MI toward Lake Erie during the early afternoon through late evening of the 31st. Ahead of the front, several lines of multicell thunderstorms and a discrete supercell persisted generally eastward across northern OH during the late afternoon through the late evening of the 31st. Some of these storms produced sporadic straight-line convective wind damage, two mesovortex-related tornadoes, and small hail. The ambient environment of these storms included weak to moderate MUCAPE and moderate to strong effective bulk shear. It appears the development of a southwesterly to west-southwesterly low-level jet and resulting enhanced surface-based ESRH coinciding with favorably-low mixed layer LCL's contributed to the development of the two tornadoes.

An EF1 tornado with estimated peak winds of 100-mph impacted the Chesterland area. Radar data indicate this was a rare anticyclonic tornado. The tornado began just northeast of the intersection of Watt Road and Fairmount Road, where a large barn had its roof collapse. As the tornado moved generally eastward, it downed several large pine trees onto a house along Fairmount Road, about halfway between Watt and Sperry Roads, but there was no obvious damage to the home. A power pole was snapped in half at this same location. Farther east along Fairmount Road, the tornado downed additional large pine trees. One of the trees fell onto a home and caused some roof and gutter damage. The tornado ended soon thereafter, just west-northwest of the intersection of Fairmount and Rockhaven Roads.

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

18 minutes of warning. NWS CLE issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:31 UTC, 18 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 22:00 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 19:00 UTC and running to 00:38 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, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 20:00 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.

Cleveland - Cuyahoga County (CGF), 18 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Cleveland radar (KCLE), 48 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:46 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 2026 tornado in OhioEvery tornado in Ohio since 1950Warnings in force in Ohio nowThe forecast where you are

2 more have been surveyed in the United States that day, so far.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. A survey can be revised, so the rating, the path and the casualties can all still change.

NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit, the record the survey teams file from the damage, and NOAA Storm Prediction Center storm reports. Neither is the official database for 2026, which SPC publishes in the spring of 2027.