Ohio Tornado Risk (Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati: school, living, stations)

[Simfan453]

How often to Tornadoes hit Ohio? What about the Cleveland area?

[asearchforreason]

I don't have any hard data on this but I would guess that the majority of tornados in Ohio are in the western 2/3 of the state. I don't know of a whole lot of tornados in the Cleveland area. I think that Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati, Lima, etc are more in the tornado path. However, I have lived in Ohio all my life and I have never been afraid of a tornado. If the weather looks bad, just watch the news or go down to your basement. They have real time tracking on the weather stations these days.

[MABCle]

Yeah, Cleveland usually will get one or two big severe thunderstorms in the summer. When I first went to school in Cincinnati (I'm now at OSU) I was shocked when I heard the tornado alarm Drills on Wednesday mornings. We don't even have warning sirens in most of Greater Cleveland, if that tells you anything.

[HAS]

I've lived just 20 minutes outside of Cleveland my entire life and have never experienced a tornado. I can remember the sirens sounding on two occassions, signaling that a tornado or a funnel cloud was sighted somewhere, however there was never any damage.

[maestro]

I've been in Ohio for a while, and I don't think you need to be overly concerned with tornadoes. There are some tornadoes and a handful of tornado watches/warnings, but I don't think it's so widespread or such a threat that you would want to consider living here.

[Cosmic]

Ohio is a pretty big place.

In general the risk is probably more real in the flatter more open areas of the state, usually that is the western parts. Anything with much in the way of hills usually won't have much risk.

I don't think you get any of the really big monster tornadoes like out in TX, OK, NB, etc. Ohio does get wind storms that can blow up a bit.

Some parts of Ohio do get some good thunderstorms, some of the summer storms can be dandies. Hail might be more a risk than tornadoes, that and flooding are the more common type disasters to watch out for in Ohio.

[columbus1234567890-]

2 Tornadoes usally hit once every 5 years in columbus they are usally weak

[streetcreed]

Yes, a tornado just hit Columbus proper this October, but Columbus proper is over 200 square miles, and it hit a section of Columbus that is actually in another county from downtown. If a Tornado hits the Columbus area they usually very weak and the more widespread hail damage is more of an issue. That is the part of the story that the news would leave out.

Tornados seem to generally hit the areas between Dayton and Cincinnati, the strongest, but that hardly means your in danger if you live there, a tornado could hit and only damage one street in a whole city.

And generally the tornados that do hit Ohio are weakers, there have been some big monsters, but in general to my knowledge they have hit more rural or small town areas.

[Iridium]

Well there's been I believe 2 Major F5 tornadoes in the past 40~50 years. One which hit near Warren/Niles/Newton falls (Right outside of Youngstown), and another in the famous Xenia one from 1974. So Ohio is not exempt from having monster tornadoes in any part of the state, but generally the northeastern part is the rarer side for tornadoes. We get maybe a really nasty tornado every 10ish years. There's always watches and warnings a couple times each summer, but that's about it.

[JohnKing67]

Originally Posted by Simfan453

How often to Tornadoes hit Ohio? What about the Cleveland area?

Typically not many but not every year is typical. There have been tornado outbreaks in northeast ohio but it doesn't happen near as often as places like Kansas and Oklahoma.