EF1 tornado, Sutherland to Andersonville, Kentucky, March 31, 2016

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 31, 2016

Touchdown

2:02 PM CDT (19:02 UTC)

Lifted

2:06 PM CDT (19:06 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

3.0 miles (4.8 km)

Path width

250 yards (229 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$100,000

County

Daviess County

Touchdown point

37.651, -87.129

Lift-off point

37.645, -87.075

Record number

1603311302-01

16 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 100 mph.

• Loosely tied down mobile home destroyed after being rolled northward. Dozens of trees uprooted or snapped. Trees blow down from an easterly to northwesterly direction.
• Dozens of trees uprooted. A Mobile home had a broken window.
• Adjacent carport launched over 50 feet to the NE as well.
• Roof of Barn and a small grain bin blown 100 to 200 plus feet.

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

Clusters of severe storms in northeast Arkansas moved east-northeast, affecting western Kentucky during the afternoon. Damaging winds accompanied some of the storms, along with an isolated tornado. The storms developed along and just ahead of a surface cold front.

The tornado began north of Utica on the west side of U.S. Highway 431 and continued east for approximately three miles along a county road. The tornado destroyed a mobile home and two barns and uprooted or snapped a few dozen trees. On U.S. Highway 431, a storm chaser estimated winds of 75 mph, along with a possible rain-wrapped tornado to his northeast. Peak winds based on a National Weather Service damage assessment were estimated near 100 mph. The peak winds occurred near the end of the damage path, where a single-wide mobile home was rolled northward and destroyed. The mobile home was loosely tied down.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 17:44 UTC and running to 19:22 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 16:29 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.

Owensboro/Daviess (OWB), 12 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), 87 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 19:00 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

19 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.