EF1 tornado, Alvaton to Bayfork, 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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

March 2, 2012

Touchdown

4:05 PM CST (22:05 UTC)

Lifted

4:07 PM CST (22:07 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

60 yards (55 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000

County

Warren County

Touchdown point

36.868, -86.314

Lift-off point

36.871, -86.306

Record number

1203021605-01

A surface Low over Missouri early in the afternoon of March 2nd strengthened to below 990mb as it moved north into Michigan by the evening hours. Around dawn, a warm front moved north of the Ohio River. Scattered strong storms developed along this front across northern Kentucky, bringing several reports of dime sized hail. By mid afternoon, the combination of strong wind shear, temperatures rising to the upper 70s and over 2000 Joules/kg of CAPE led to the development of numerous supercells. Several of these storms produced tornadoes not only in north central Kentucky, but later in the evening across eastern Kentucky. Large hail was common, with several reports of baseball sized hail that damaged automobiles and roofs.

A supercell thunderstorm that earlier caused straight line wind damage to Simpson County brought golf ball sized hail that penetrated siding on numerous houses near Alvaton. A tornado touched down just east of Alvaton along State Highway 961. It destroyed a barn and tool shed along a one half mile track just along the north side of State Highway 961.

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

24 minutes of warning. NWS LMK issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:41 UTC, 24 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 22:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 18:05 UTC and running to 23:48 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 High Risk, with a 0.30 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:56 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), 73 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:06 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.