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DonnyThompson Mon, 06/05/2017 - 05:25

We get several tornados in Ohio every season (usually April thru August is what we consider a "season"), and sometimes a couple waterspouts out over Lake Erie ... by and large, most are small ( of course "small" is all relative depending on where you are in proximity to it, LOL), but sometimes we get some bad ones.
Xenia, Ohio in '74, Newton Falls in '85, Cumberland County in 2011... all were big ones - strong F4/F5's which did horrendous damage and caused many fatalities. The '85 Tornado (Memorial Day Outbreak) pretty much wiped out NewtonFalls, then jumped over the Ohio state line and into western PA... (dvdhawk ) Dave Hawk might remember that one.
32 years after, you can still see its path over the tops of some of the hills of the Alleghenies towards Tionesta.
So far this season it's been quiet here... a few funnel clouds and weaker F1's...
...and I say that as I gently knock on wood and look skyward. ;)

dvdhawk Mon, 06/05/2017 - 11:10

Some guys will do anything to get out of the house.

I remember those, Donny. There's a big swath of tornado damage just as you're coming north into Kane too.

We do have tornados around here once in a while and frequent 'microbursts', but nothing like the monster tornados the flatlanders out in the midwest have to contend with, and when we do get them they generally don't seem to touch-down very long. They tend to hop across the hills and valleys instead. There is precious little level ground this far down from the Great Lakes basin and perhaps the uneven terrain keeps them from building up intensity to an extent.

DonnyThompson Mon, 06/05/2017 - 14:03

dvdhawk, post: 450740, member: 36047 wrote: There is precious little level ground this far down from the Great Lakes basin and perhaps the uneven terrain keeps them from building up intensity to an ext

I think that's what made that particular outbreak so damaging.
Those kinds of storms are far more common out in the plains states -Kansas,Oklahoma, etc - so when they hit further east people aren't as prepared. Warnings have gotten a lot better than they were back in the 60's -80's, but there are still times where they drop without much warning.
I've seen that swath up near Kane. You can still see remnants of it. That was a bad outbreak.