Tornadoes · United States · Pennsylvania · 2015
EF0 tornado, Euclid, Pennsylvania, August 10, 2015
This EF0 tornado ran 0.6 miles across Butler County on August 10, 2015, touching down at 9:45 PM EDT and reaching 60 yards wide. It killed nobody, and did $25,000 of property damage.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Enhanced Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
EF186 to 110 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
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.
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.
EF4166 to 200 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- EF0
- Date
- August 10, 2015
- Touchdown
- 9:45 PM EDT (01:45 UTC)
- Lifted
- 9:46 PM EDT (01:46 UTC)
- On the ground
- 1 minutes
- Path length
- 0.6 miles (0.9 km)
- Path width
- 60 yards (55 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- Property damage
- $25,000
- County
- Butler County
- Touchdown point
- 40.998, -79.906
- Lift-off point
- 41.001, -79.896
- Record number
- 1508101945-01
The damage survey
6 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PBZ, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 80 mph.
Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.
What the Weather Service recorded
A weak cold front and an associated upper level shortwave produced scattered thunderstorms the afternoon and evening of the 10th. A weak and short lived EF-0 tornado occurred in northern Butler county in Pennsylvania, with isolated downburst damage to trees in Muskingum county in Ohio.
An NWS Storm Survey found a EF-0 tornado, with maximum winds of 80 MPH. The maximum path width was 60 yards. The tornado touched down in a field southwest of West Sunbury just off state route 308, and traveled northeast taking off a roof at a service station. The storm then moved a carport adjacent to the service station 40 yards, and crossed over state route 308 and destroyed a deck on a house. The storm traveled northeast and uprooted large trees before dissipating.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The air that afternoon
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.
Pittsburgh, PA (KAGC), 00:00Z
1.8 hours before the tornado, 68 km from the path. August 11, 2015.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 567 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -14 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 1469 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1183 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 21 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 15 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 36 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 108 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.0
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 7.0 K/km
The surface observations
Butler Co. (Awos) (BTP), 25 km from the path, in the two hours either side.
| Time (UTC) | Temp (°F) | Dew point (°F) | Wind | Gust (kt) | Pressure (mb) | Weather |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC |
From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.
The radar
The Pittsburgh radar (KPBZ), 58 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:45 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.
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2015 tornado in PennsylvaniaEvery tornado in Pennsylvania since 1950Warnings in force in Pennsylvania nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of August 10, 2015
1 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 10 | 2:12 PM CDT | EF0 | Washington, WI | 1.0 | 50 | $1,000 |
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.