FOWLER TWP., Ohio - The National Weather Service is reporting damage caused in two Trumbull County communities was caused by a tornado.

After inspecting the damaged areas, weather service experts concluded that the twister that brought down trees and wires in Fowler and Hartford Townships Thursday night was classified as an EF1 on the zero to five scale of severity.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an EF1 tornado can be accompanied by winds of between 86 and 110 miles per hour.

The National Weather Service says the damage path was 200 yards wide and a total of one and a quarter miles long.

No one was injured, and the damage appeared to be limited to trees, power lines, and cable lines.

According to the three meteorologists from the survey team that traveled to Trumbull County the starting point of the twister was in the center of Fowler on Route 193, and it was confined to Sodom-Hutchins Road and Route 193.

Thanks to a witness they were able to locate a wooded area near Ohio 305 where they also believe the twister touched down.

Lisa Starcher of Fowler, who lives near the center of town recorded cell phone video of Thursday night's tornado just like so many other 21 News viewers.

She sounds scared to death as she screams for her son to be serious and come inside.

In the video, you can see the clouds darken and a tail form on the cloud in the form of a tornado.

The morning after we find Bud Morgan also of Fowler on his tractor and thankful that the lights are back on, and ready for the clean-up after a storm like he's never seen before.

He never saw anything that looked like a tornado, only a sky that turned jet black.

"I knew that we were going to get some storms, but I didn't know about a tornado right until the last minute.  Then it was too late.  We went to our furnace room in the center of the house," Morgan said.

Three meteorologists from the National Weather Service traveled to Trumbull County Friday morning to survey the damage, and as they came across one heavily wooded area near Ohio 305 they said, "This looks like the center right through here."

The weather team had help from witness Brett Starcher of Fowler, videos that were recorded by witnesses, and uprooted trees that tell a story of their own.

Nick Greenawalt is a Meteorologist with the National Weather Service out of Cleveland, "We're kind of in the middle of the tornado damage here, and the thing that's really obvious to us is we see these trees that have been uprooted and snapped that are all kind of converging into a single point.  That's a classic signature of tornado damage."

The National Weather Service also surveyed more of the area along Route 7 and Hartford Township and determined it was part of the same weather event, not a separate tornado.

Meanwhile, some Trumbull County communities wanted to sound their tornado sirens when the skies turned threatening Thursday night, but they hesitated to do so because the National Weather Service had not issued a warning yet.

The tornado warning was issued at 7:05 pm and the tornado was spotted at 7:18 pm.

According to the National Weather Service, their goal is to give 15 minutes or so of lead time on the first touch down so that people have time to take action based on their warnings.

"So there are occasions where people may be seeing a tornado, but until we know about that then we might not have all the criteria or all the data necessary to make the determination," Greenawalt said.

The National Weather Service said even with the criteria they use to determine when to send out a warning, in this case they actually did receive a lot of help from the public, "We actually had a lot of spotters calling in yesterday and letting us know what they were seeing in the sky so that really helped us in the warning process, because the radar can only show so much," according to Greenawalt.

But the best advice, warning or not, is if you feel in danger find shelter until you're sure the threat has passed.