EF1 tornado, Helton to Lewis Creek, Kentucky, July 27, 2014

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

July 27, 2014

Touchdown

4:24 PM EDT (20:24 UTC)

Lifted

4:26 PM EDT (20:26 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

2.0 miles (3.2 km)

Path width

900 yards (823 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Leslie County

Touchdown point

36.957, -83.351

Lift-off point

36.954, -83.310

Record number

1407271424-01

7 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS JKL, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 95 mph.

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

Widespread severe thunderstorms affected portions of eastern Kentucky on July 27th in advance of a strong cold front ushering in a fall-like air mass. Isolated storms moved across the area during the late morning hours as they moved out of Indiana and Ohio. The more significant severe weather episode occurred during the afternoon and evening hours south of the Mountain Parkway. The second round of storms began to form as warm moist air off the Gulf of Mexico moved northward and interacted with a frontal boundary that extended from south central Indiana into central Kentucky. Numerous reports of large hail between quarter and softball size were received by the weather office. The storms also blew down large numbers of trees across the area. The hardest areas were Clay, Leslie, McCreary, and Whitley counties, where numerous reports of downed trees, giant hail and even one tornado were received. The tornado occurred in Leslie county along with giant softball size hail.

A tornado touched down briefly in southern Leslie County visible from Highway 2009 around 424 PM on Sunday afternoon. A consistent path up to a half mile wide of uprooted and snapped hardwood and softwood trees was observed descending down the Upper Double branch creek, crossing Highway 2009 and then ascending back up the adjacent hillside in a west-northwest to east-southeast direction. Uprooted trees damaged a cemetery but no habitable structures were damaged. Based on visible damage, maximum winds likely reached 110 mph in the tornado. The tornado touched down in a remote area and the only access was via Highway 2009, thus tornado specifics are limited to what could be observed from the road and information obtained from a local land owner.

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

45 minutes of warning. NWS JKL issued a tornado warning for this county at 19:39 UTC, 45 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 20:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 17:00 UTC and running to 00:00 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 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 20:00 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.

Harlan Tucker Memorial (I35), 11 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Jackson,KY radar (KJKL), 71 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:25 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 2014 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

11 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.