EF2 tornado, Hopkinsville to Pembroke, Kentucky, April 4, 2011

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

April 4, 2011

Touchdown

12:04 PM CDT (17:04 UTC)

Lifted

12:10 PM CDT (17:10 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

5.3 miles (8.5 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

7

Property damage

$2.0 million

County

Christian County

Touchdown point

36.783, -87.397

Lift-off point

36.813, -87.309

Record number

1104041104-01

Thunderstorms gradually intensified along and ahead of a cold front from Arkansas into western Kentucky. The storms occurred in a moist and strongly sheared environment, resulting in a combination of line segments and supercells which evolved into a quasi-linear convective system. There were isolated tornadoes, along with a couple small swaths of damaging winds.

The tornado path began along U.S. Highway 41 at a large auto parts manufacturing plant. The industrial warehouse type building was heavily damaged on the north and west sides. Large sections of roof up to 100 by 400 feet were removed. Small sections of exterior walls were peeled back or blown in. A rooftop hvac unit was blown off the building. There were seven injuries to workers inside the plant, mostly due to flying objects. One worker required overnight hospitalization. Some of the injuries included a broken jaw and broken foot. In front of the industrial building on U.S. 41, steel utility poles were bent almost to the ground. The remainder of the path was mostly through open farm country. Several barns were destroyed, and metal roofs were off two homes. Dozens of trees were uprooted. Observers at Fort Campbell reported seeing a rotating wall cloud about the time of the tornado. Peak winds were estimated near 130 mph. The average path width was 150 yards.

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

23 minutes of warning. NWS PAH issued a tornado warning for this county at 16:41 UTC, 23 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 17:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 12:25 UTC and running to 18:43 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:29 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.

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 2011 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

42 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.