After surveying the damage Tuesday morning NWS … It's a sobering experience but at the same time we know we're lucky.
(MORE: The Tornado East Texas Never Saw Coming)Boundary Collision + Thunderstorm = TornadoThe large-scale setup, as is often the case in summer, was favorable for thunderstorms over northern Ohio, but not necessarily supercell thunderstorms.The conventional radar reflectivity signature was not in any way suggestive of a tornado, compared to a more classic hook echo in a tornadic supercell.However, just as fast as the rotation appeared, it weakened as the outflow boundaries continued surging past the storm cluster they boosted, cutting off the flow of warm, humid air thunderstorms feed off of.The morning convective outlook from NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center, a general forecast of both severe and non-severe thunderstorms, only depicted a general area of thunderstorms over northern Ohio, with a small risk (five percent chance within 25 miles of a point) of large hail or damaging winds, as shown above.Issue more tornado warnings to attempt to capture every tornado, but then risk more false alarms, increasing complacency in response by the public.While instability (warm, humid air near the surface and in this case, somewhat cooler, drier air aloft) was in play, wind shear – namely, the change in wind speed and direction with height required to sustained supercells – was rather unremarkable.What changed so quickly to spawn this tornado?Less than two minutes later, a tighter rotation began to appear in new storm-relative velocity imagery, denoted by the red circle above at right. Think of this similar to rolling a pencil on your desk. Thankfully, no injuries were reported. The tornado sirens are scattered throughout strategic locations in Brunswick and Brunswick Hills Township.
My car has got some damage but it's fixable," said Mark Seidel. When a thunderstorm’s updraft passes over these boundaries, their horizontal spin can be tilted and stretched by the thunderstorm’s updraft into the vertical.
Brunswick (/ ˈ b r ʌ n z w ɪ k / or / ˈ b r ʌ n s w ɪ k /) is the largest city in Medina County, Ohio, United States approximately 20 mi (32 km) SW of Cleveland.The population was 34,255 at the 2010 census and estimated at 34,880 as of 2019. Brunswick, Ohio (population: 34255) had 5 hail reports within 10 miles of the city center located at (41.23811, -81.8418) in 2020. Thankfully, no injuries were reported. The final storm survey from NWS Cleveland estimated the tornado lasted only five minutes, from 6:55 to 7:00 p.m.This puts NWS forecasters in a catch-22:Interestingly, merging thunderstorm cells (illustrated in the first radar loop above) may have also played a factor in the Brunswick case, as recent research on the Moore, Oklahoma, 2013 tornado illustrates.A frontal system was approaching from the western Great Lakes, with a warm front lifting northward into the Buckeye State, south of which resided warm and humid air, but not oppressively so by late June standards.First, a lake-breeze boundary, a mini cold front between the cooler air over Lake Erie and warmer, more humid air inland, surged southward, denoted by the blue arrows at the beginning of the radar loop above.
An average June day features 228 reports of severe weather nationwide, according to Dr. Forbes.An EF1 tornado tore through a part of Brunswick, Ohio Monday evening, damaging at least 45 homes and businesses, according to a storm survey from the National Weather Service’s office in Cleveland. There was no tornado warning issued. But you can send us an email and we'll get back to you, asap.When boundaries collide, unstable air is lifted, and either new thunderstorms are formed, or existing storms are given a boost by the uplift.This prompted the National Weather Service office in Cleveland to issue a severe thunderstorm warning at 6:54 p.m. ET.The short answer is this was a very difficult case for any forecaster, even those with experience, to diagnose in real time. As National Weather Service severe thunderstorm warnings often say, severe thunderstorms can produce tornadoes with little or no advance warning.There were three distinct boundaries picked up by the NWS-Cleveland Doppler radar, which are pointed out in the radar loop above.The day’s TOR:CON forecast from severe weather expert Dr. Greg Forbes assigned a TOR:CON tornado potential index of “2 or less,” a value indicative of a low chance of a tornado and one assigned to many areas of the country quite often in the late spring, summer or fall.At that time, there was a signature in Doppler radar suggesting strong, straight-line wind gusts were possible, as shown by the brighter green shadings in the middle radar images above at right.Add to that a pair of thunderstorm outflow boundaries, one moving northward from near Mansfield, Ohio, another surging east from a cluster of thunderstorms arriving from northwest Ohio, and the stage was set for a collision.However, there was that one tornado.As you can see in the interactive map above, these forecasts turned out to be quite accurate.
This may have been how the Brunswick tornado formed.There was no tornado warning issued.It is always good practice to seek shelter for severe thunderstorm warnings. Strong storm slams Northeast Ohio overnight. CITY HALL IS CLOSED TO WALK-IN VISITORS.