EF0 tornado, Elva to Sharpe, Kentucky, December 26, 2016

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

   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 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

EF0

Date

December 26, 2016

Touchdown

3:08 PM CST (21:08 UTC)

Lifted

3:10 PM CST (21:10 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.4 miles (2.3 km)

Path width

40 yards (37 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$4,000

County

Marshall County

Touchdown point

36.945, -88.446

Lift-off point

36.952, -88.421

Record number

1612261508-01

5 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 77 mph.

• Large outdoor items such as a swingset were blown around. Shingles were blown off a roof. A few small trees and tree limbs were blown down. The damage occurred near the path of a supercell, which a couple of minutes later produced a weak tornado south and southeast of Sharpe.
• Vinyl soffit damage to home; shingles blown off an outbuilding
• 2 cedar trees uprooted in ditch
• An old chicken coop was blown about 40 feet across a yard, and a few trees were down.

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

Ahead of a strong cold front over southeast Missouri and southern Illinois, bands of showers and scattered thunderstorms developed over the Lower Ohio Valley. Surface dew points were in the 60's in the southerly flow ahead of the front. Afternoon heating of the moist air mass resulted in weak destabilization, with mixed-layer capes around 500 j/kg. Stronger wind flow aloft extended from central Arkansas northeastward to western Kentucky, where instability was maximized. A couple of the storms increased in intensity, showing occasional supercell characteristics. One such storm produced a weak tornado as it crossed northern Marshall County. A slow-moving band of heavy showers caused flooding in some of the typical problem spots near Paducah.

The supercell which produced a funnel cloud in southeast McCracken County spawned a weak tornado in Marshall County near Sharpe. On Kentucky Highway 795, an old chicken coop was blown about 40 feet across a yard, and a few trees were down. Near the end of the damage track, a couple of cedar trees were uprooted, and another tree was snapped. In the same area, there was soffit damage to a house, and shingles were blown off an outbuilding. Peak winds were estimated near 75 mph.

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

5 minutes of warning. NWS PAH issued a tornado warning for this county at 21:03 UTC, 5 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 21:19 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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 19:42 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 Paducah radar (KPAH), 33 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:06 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 2016 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

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.