EF1 tornado, Bremen, Kentucky, November 18, 2017

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

November 18, 2017

Touchdown

3:02 PM CST (21:02 UTC)

Lifted

3:05 PM CST (21:05 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

2.8 miles (4.5 km)

Path width

300 yards (274 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$100,000

County

Muhlenberg County

Touchdown point

37.343, -87.234

Lift-off point

37.340, -87.183

Record number

1711181502-01

20 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 94 mph.

• Large approximately 50X40 foot implement metal building had large westward doors blown in and eastward doors blown away. Plank projectiles from adjacent tobacco barn penetrated west side of barn siding. A pickup truck attached to a trailor load of tobacco bailes weighing several thousand pounds was shifted about a foot.
• Tobacco barn levelled with part of it blown several hundred yards to the SE and then arcing eastward.
• A couple trees down nearby.
• Minor shingle loss and facia damage.

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

A broken line of thunderstorms formed along a cold front as it surged southeast from Missouri into the lower Ohio Valley. A large pocket of clear sky during the morning helped warm the lower levels of the atmosphere. Instability became sufficient for storms to fire right along the front, where a rather strong capping inversion was broken. A vigorous upper-level trough moving rapidly eastward across the central Plains provided plenty of large-scale forcing for storm initiation. Very strong wind shear was supportive of isolated tornadoes along the evolving quasi-linear convective system. Scattered damaging wind gusts accompanied the leading edge of the activity.

One tobacco barn was levelled, and two others sustained major damage. Part of the tobacco barn was blown several hundred yards to the southeast and then arcing eastward. Plank projectiles from the tobacco barn were embedded in the siding of a shed. At least five other barns sustained minor roof or siding damage. A pickup truck attached to a loaded trailer was shifted about a foot. A half dozen homes lost some shingles. Dozens of trees were uprooted or lost large limbs. The tornado began just west of Highway 181 and ended just east of Highway 2584. The damage was most extensive in the area of Highway 181. Peak winds were estimated near 90 mph.

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 17:05 UTC and running to 22:14 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:49 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.

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 2017 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

15 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.