EF0 tornado, Tompkinsville, Kentucky, May 2, 2010

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 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.

4. EF3136 to 165 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. EF5over 200 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.

7. 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.

Rating

EF0

Date

May 2, 2010

Touchdown

8:35 AM CDT (13:35 UTC)

Lifted

8:37 AM CDT (13:37 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

5.7 miles (9.2 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5,000

County

Monroe County

Touchdown point

36.700, -85.758

Lift-off point

36.700, -85.655

Record number

1005020735-01

A stalled cold front over the Mississippi Valley spawned thunderstorms producing heavy rain from northern Mississippi through middle Tennessee and central Kentucky into southern Indiana. With little movement of the front, training of storms produced record or near-record 2-day rainfall totals from 8 to 10+ inches in many locations across central Kentucky. Major flooding occurred in at least 40 Kentucky counties, washing out roads and inundating municipal water treatment plants. Four lives were lost in Kentucky - three in vehicles and one in a home, where the resident was apparently electrocuted in high water. Over the following days, most area rivers were in flood, including some flooding along the main stem of the Ohio River.

A NWS storm survey confirmed that a tornado touched down around 835 am CDT 4.3 miles west of Tompkinsville. A tobacco barn and several trees were damaged. The tornado then traveled east around 5.7 miles and lifted 1.4 miles east of Tompkinsville after damaging several trees. The tornado was rated EF-0 with estimated winds of 80 to 85 mph.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

2 minutes of warning. NWS LMK issued a tornado warning for this county at 13:33 UTC, 2 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 14:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 09:37 UTC and running to 16:00 UTC.

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 Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 12:42 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 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.

The Nashville radar (KOHX), 92 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 13:34 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2010 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

20 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

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.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.