EF0 tornado, Rumer to Buffalo, West Virginia, April 2, 2024

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

April 2, 2024

Touchdown

10:55 AM EDT (14:55 UTC)

Lifted

10:56 AM EDT (14:56 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.6 miles (0.9 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$10,000

County

Putnam County

Touchdown point

38.605, -81.980

Lift-off point

38.609, -81.971

Record number

2404020855-01

4 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS RLX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 95 mph.

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

A strong area of low pressure tracking through the Ohio Valley caused multiple rounds of thunderstorms across the state of West Virginia on April 2nd and 3rd. The first round that occurred on the 2nd took the form of an intense squall line that raced across the southern and central portions of the state during the late morning and midday hours. This caused extensive wind damage, with a 92 mile per hour wind gust measured at the Huntington Tri-State Airport, along with at least nine embedded tornadoes in a corridor from Huntington to east of Charleston. In addition to damage associated with the tornadoes, over 100 locations reported non-tornadic wind damage.||Additional thunderstorms later in the afternoon produced another tornado in the Hico community of Fayette County. The ten confirmed tornadoes during this event is a record for the most tornadoes observed during any event in the state of West Virginia.||To top it all off, the multiple rounds of thunderstorms also resulted in excessive rainfall amounts for parts of the state. This resulted in several instances of flash flooding of creeks and streams with reported road closures due to high water, primarily during the evening of April 2nd. The transition to generalized flooding occurred during the early morning of April 3rd due to the response from larger creeks. Considerable runoff from this rainfall caused river flooding along the Tygart Valley River and its tributaries, and very heavy rainfall over Pennsylvania from these same storms led to moderate to major flooding on the Ohio River between April 4th to the 6th. One fatality occurred in Wood County on the 4th when a motorist entered flood waters and their vehicle overturned and then submerged.

An EF1 tornado touched down south of Eleanor to Bancroft, with a non-continuous path and maximum winds of 90 miles per hour. Initial damage was observed along Hurricane Creek Road, just north of the intersection with Sugar Camp Road south of Fraziers Bottom.||Scattered tree damage was observed, mainly large limbs of hardwood trees with a few uprooted trees noted as well. There was a slight converging signature observed in this area. More significant hardwood tree damage was observed along State Route 34 south of Winfield with a concentrated area of hardwoods either snapped or uprooted with a more pronounced tornadic damage signature. ||Additionally, concentrated tree damage occurred along State Route 817 in the Shawnee Estates area across from Bancroft. Here, a narrow damage swath of several mixed hardwood and softwood trees were either snapped or uprooted, which continued eastward along Cannery Lane. A converging damage path was noted.||The tornado appeared to be in the treetops with only minor property damage observed. The tornado lifted just after crossing the Kanawha River.

An EF0 tornado with maximum winds of 80 miles per hour was discovered in the Buffalo area. Concentrated tree damage was observed along the side of a ridge along the east side of Railroad Avenue with several large hardwood trees uprooted in a north-northeast orientation, showing a slight converging signature. This signature became more apparent to the northeast along Cross Creek Road where several mixed softwood and hardwood trees were observed either uprooted or snapped. The tornado appeared to stay in the treetops with no property damage observed. The tornado quickly lifted along Cross Creek Road.

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

28 minutes of warning. NWS RLX issued a tornado warning for this county at 14:27 UTC, 28 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 15:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 14:20 UTC and running to 17:00 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 12:32 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.

Charleston/Kanawha (CRW), 42 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Charleston,WV radar (KRLX), 40 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 14:56 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 West VirginiaEvery tornado in West Virginia since 1950Warnings in force in West Virginia nowThe forecast where you are

68 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 69 of them

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.