EF0 tornado, Princeton, Pennsylvania, May 3, 2021

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

May 3, 2021

Touchdown

9:37 PM EDT (01:37 UTC)

Path length

0.2 miles (0.3 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Lawrence County

Touchdown point

40.976, -80.210

Lift-off point

40.976, -80.210

Record number

2105031937-01

1 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 61 mph.

• Threshold damage. Several large limbs were snapped in this area along the west-facing edge of a copse of trees.

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

Showers supported by a crossing shortwave trough moved across western Pennsylvania on the evening of May 3rd. Due to an overall lack of instability, lightning was not observed from this precipitation. However, enough low-level shear existed to induce rotation in a few of the showers, and a very brief tornado occurred northwest of Portersville.

Based on observed threshold damage to large limbs and in light of|radar data, a NWS storm survey concluded that the damage in|northeastern Lawrence County likely was the result of a very brief,|weak tornado that lasted only a short period of time.||Although radar velocity appeared at its strongest subsequent to|this time, rotation-track transects discovered no damage|downstream from this initial spot or into Butler County.||Photographs that have been shared with us appear to depict a wall|cloud with rising cloud debris earlier in the storm's track near|Bessemer, but no circulation can be confirmed at ground level. |NWS Pittsburgh is unaware of damage from western Lawrence County,|and therefore cannot confirm a tornado elsewhere along the |storm's path.

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

8 minutes of warning. NWS PBZ issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:29 UTC, 8 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:00 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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 00:59 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.

The Pittsburgh radar (KPBZ), 49 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 01:35 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 2021 tornado in PennsylvaniaEvery tornado in Pennsylvania since 1950Warnings in force in Pennsylvania nowThe forecast where you are

30 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.