Tornadoes · United States · Kentucky · 2000
F0 tornado, Murray, Kentucky, May 23, 2000
This F0 tornado ran 0.1 miles across Calloway County on May 23, 2000, touching down at 6:15 PM CDT and reaching 20 yards wide. It killed nobody.
The rating scale
Tracks are drawn in the color of the rating. The Fujita scale rates the damage rather than measuring the wind: the speeds are what that damage is taken to imply.
F040 to 72 mphthis tornado
Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
F173 to 112 mph
Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.
F2113 to 157 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.
F3158 to 206 mph
Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.
F4207 to 260 mph
Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.
F5261 to 318 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.
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.
The record
- Rating
- F0
- Date
- May 23, 2000
- Touchdown
- 6:15 PM CDT (23:15 UTC)
- Path length
- 0.1 miles (0.2 km)
- Path width
- 20 yards (18 m)
- Deaths
- 0
- Injuries
- 0
- County
- Calloway County
- Touchdown point
- 36.620, -88.330
- Lift-off point
- 36.620, -88.330
- Record number
- 204
What the Weather Service recorded
Two reliable witnesses reported a very brief tornado touchdown on the west side of Murray, just north of Highway 121. The funnel briefly touched a house roof, but no real damage occurred.
A relatively weak F-1 tornado with maximum wind speeds near 80 MPH moved southeast across the "Almo Heights" area. Three houses sustained roof damage, mainly due to trees falling on them. The storm that spawned the tornado displayed excellent supercellular characteristics on radar throughout its path across Calloway County. Videotape of the storm's funnel cloud was shown on local media outlets. The funnel again briefly touched down in eastern Calloway County.
The supercell thunderstorm that produced the F-1 tornado near Almo Heights in Calloway County generated another weaker, short-lived tornado between Murray and Hamlin. Spotters and sheriff deputies chasing the funnel cloud clearly observed multiple brief touchdowns in open fields and woodlands. Tree limbs were torn off. There was no structural damage. The path width was estimated to be no more than 50 feet wide.
From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.
The warnings
No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.
| Issued (UTC) | Expired | Product | Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| 23:33 UTC | 00:15 UTC | Severe Thunderstorm Warning | PAH |
| 23:36 UTC | 00:00 UTC | Tornado Warning | PAH |
| 00:00 UTC | 00:30 UTC | Tornado Warning | PAH |
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 forecast that day
The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:53 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 air that afternoon
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.
Nashville Metro, TN (KBNA), 12:00Z
11.3 hours before the tornado, 164 km from the path. May 23, 2000.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 25 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -194 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 89 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1129 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 38 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 26 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 232 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 311 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.0
- Supercell composite
- 0.4
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 5.1 K/km
Nashville Metro, TN (KBNA), 00:00Z
0.7 hours after it, 164 km from the path. May 24, 2000.
- Mixed-layer CAPE
- 1386 J/kg
- Mixed-layer CIN
- -16 J/kg
- Surface CAPE
- 908 J/kg
- Mixed-layer LCL
- 1168 m above ground
- 0-6 km bulk shear
- 40 kt
- 0-1 km bulk shear
- 15 kt
- 0-1 km storm-relative helicity
- 102 m²/s²
- 0-3 km storm-relative helicity
- 216 m²/s²
- Significant tornado parameter
- 0.9
- Supercell composite
- 6.9
- 0-3 km lapse rate
- 6.5 K/km
This ground now
The live radar over the trackEvery 2000 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are
The other tornadoes of May 23, 2000
16 more were confirmed in the United States that day.
| Date | Time | Rating | Where | Path (mi) | Width (yd) | Deaths | Injuries | Damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 23 | 2:00 PM CDT | F3 | Grayson, KY | 6.0 | 100 | 16 | $50 million | |
| May 23 | 2:25 PM CDT | F0 | Hart, KY | 0.1 | 20 | |||
| May 23 | 4:40 PM EDT | F2 | Harrison, OH | 3.0 | 200 | $100,000 | ||
| May 23 | 5:05 PM EDT | F1 | Knox, TN | 0.5 | 40 | 1 | ||
| May 23 | 5:06 PM EDT | F0 | Jefferson, OH | 2.0 | 50 | $10,000 | ||
| May 23 | 5:20 PM EDT | F0 | Taylor, KY | 0.1 | 20 | $10,000 | ||
| May 23 | 6:00 PM EDT | F0 | Fairfield, OH | 0.5 | 130 | $50,000 | ||
| May 23 | 6:10 PM EDT | F1 | Perry, OH | 2.0 | 150 | $180,000 | ||
| May 23 | 6:30 PM EDT | F2 | Marion, OH | 3.0 | 200 | $200,000 | ||
| May 23 | 6:30 PM CDT | F1 | Calloway, KY | 1.5 | 100 | $50,000 | ||
| May 23 | 7:43 PM EDT | F1 | Tyler, WV | 1.0 | 70 | $90,000 | ||
| May 23 | 7:04 PM CDT | F0 | Calloway, KY | 0.2 | 20 | $4,000 | ||
| May 23 | 8:15 PM EDT | F1 | Washington, OH | 1.0 | 100 | $150,000 | ||
| May 23 | 7:25 PM CDT | F1 | Stewart, TN | 0.2 | 20 | |||
| May 23 | 7:48 PM CDT | F0 | Bollinger, MO | 0.3 | 20 | |||
| May 23 | 9:04 PM CDT | F0 | Scott, MO | 0.2 | 30 |
What this means
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.
Sources
NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.