EF0 tornado, Saegersville, Pennsylvania, July 22, 2018

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

   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. 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

EF0

Date

July 22, 2018

Touchdown

6:26 PM EDT (22:26 UTC)

Lifted

6:30 PM EDT (22:30 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

0.8 miles (1.3 km)

Path width

20 yards (18 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Lehigh County

Touchdown point

40.707, -75.666

Lift-off point

40.715, -75.678

Record number

1807221626-01

4 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PHI, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 76 mph.

• Tornado started along Church Road, causing tree damage, then moved through a cornfield. The tornado then moved over the Heidel Hallow Farm on Saegersville Road in Germansville and caused damage to a metal barn roof. The tornado may not have been on the ground the whole time as damage tended to be sporadic in nature along the 0.8 mile path.

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

A weak EF-0 tornado occurred on this day near Heidelberg Township in northern Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. A closed upper low centered over the Ohio Valley and a filling surface low rotating around the upper low near Lake Ontario helped initiate weak thunderstorms and heavy rainfall across east-central Pennsylvania. Enough instability allowed for several strong to severe thunderstorms to form across the Lehigh Valley on this afternoon in the wake of a strong and progressive coastal low that pivoted northward around the closed upper-low.

A weak tornado occurred on the evening of July 22, 2018 in |Heidelberg Township, PA. The well defined path through the corn|field and twisted nature of the tree damage and eye witness |accounts helped to determine this was tornadic damage. The tornado was brief and moved northwest for around 0.8 miles. Damage started with several small trees and limbs being downed along Church Road near the Heidelberg Church. Further west, areas of corn were blown over, with areas each being blown over in several different directions, near some solar panels at the Heidel Hollow Farm. There was also damage to sheet metal on the sides and roof of a barn at the farm. These areas of damage fell in a relatively straight line.

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.

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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:59 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.

Lehighton (22N), 13 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Philadelphia radar (KDIX), 137 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:24 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 2018 tornado in PennsylvaniaEvery tornado in Pennsylvania since 1950Warnings in force in Pennsylvania nowThe forecast where you are

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.