EF2 tornado, Chapman to Hitesville, Kentucky, March 2, 2012

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

March 2, 2012

Touchdown

1:38 PM CST (19:38 UTC)

Lifted

1:44 PM CST (19:44 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

6.6 miles (10.6 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

1

County

Union County

Touchdown point

37.745, -87.909

Lift-off point

37.748, -87.788

Record number

1203021338-01

6 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 120 mph.

• .A HOME HAD MOST OF ITS ROOF REMOVED A GRAIN BIN AND SEVERAL BARNS WERE DESTROYED. An elderly man was injured while taking shelter in his home.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

Supercells developed across western Kentucky. The supercells raced east-northeast at 50 to 60 mph as a strong storm system moved northeast from Oklahoma to lower Michigan with it's associated cold front sweeping east across the Ohio and Tennessee valleys. Strong wind shear with the storm system combined with warm, moist and unstable air provided the fuel for supercell thunderstorms.

The tornado touched down about 2 and 1/2 miles southeast of Uniontown and tracked east to about 5 miles west of Corydon. The tornado blew the roof off a home, destroyed a grain bin and a barn, blew down several trees and power poles, and produced mostly minor damage to a few homes and other structures. An elderly man was injured by flying debris in the house that lost its roof.

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

10 minutes of warning. NWS PAH issued a tornado warning for this county at 19:28 UTC, 10 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 20:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 16:25 UTC and running to 21:49 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 16:31 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.

Henderson City (EHR), 16 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

The Evansville,IN radar (KVWX), 58 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:38 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 2012 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

69 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 70 of them

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.