EF2 tornado, Louisville to Audubon Park, Kentucky, June 22, 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

June 22, 2011

Touchdown

8:04 PM EDT (00:04 UTC)

Lifted

8:07 PM EDT (00:07 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

1.2 miles (1.9 km)

Path width

120 yards (110 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$400,000

County

Jefferson County

Touchdown point

38.199, -85.773

Lift-off point

38.205, -85.751

Record number

1106221804-01

A deep occluded closed low across the Upper Midwest brought a cold front and wind shift along the Ohio River during the early evening hours on June 22nd. Scattered storms developed to the west of Louisville during the late afternoon and intensified as they moved east into Jefferson County, Kentucky. Although instability was marginal, a jet streak aloft combined with directional wind shear closer the the surface allowed several low topped supercells to develop just to the west of Louisville. The first storm generated a tornado that damaged several horse barns at Churchill Downs and destroyed a large industrial building just southeast of the University of Louisville's football stadium. A second rotating supercell tracked just to the south of the first storm, spawning three brief tornadoes along a west to east path in the eastern part of the Louisville Metro area.

This tornado touched down just southwest of an area of horse barns on the south side of Churchill Downs. Five barns, which also contained apartments for many workers, had major sections of their roofs removed, with minor damage to several others. In the buildings most heavily damaged, parts of supporting walls made from cinder blocks collapsed. Christ Church, located on the Churchill Downs property, also had roof and siding damage. After snapping trees and downing power lines for several blocks to the east of Churchill, the tornado crossed a large stadium parking lot, strengthening to low-end EF-2 intensity near the intersection of Floyd Street and Central Avenue. At this location, just 300 yards southeast of the University of Louisville's football stadium, a large industrial building was heavily damaged, with a collapsed 2-story cinder block wall and a 150-foot section of roof removed from the warehouse. A 30' x 80' section of roof over an adjacent office building was also torn off. The tornado downed several more trees and did minor roof damage to a Super 8 Motel and other office buildings before lifting north of the intersection of Crittenden Drive and Central Avenue near an entrance ramp onto Interstate 65. ||Despite the most heavily damaged Churchill Downs buildings being occupied by numerous racing horses and at least three workers at the time of the tornado, no injuries were sustained by either the animals or their handlers. One man was in an upstairs room when the roof above him was ripped off, while two others were in in a ground-floor apartment where cinder blocks fell from an exterior wall.

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

1 minute of warning. NWS LMK issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:03 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:30 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 19:57 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 Louisville radar (KLVX), 30 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:03 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 2011 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

7 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.