EF1 tornado, Rockcastle, Kentucky, December 31, 2018

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

December 31, 2018

Touchdown

12:35 PM CST (18:35 UTC)

Lifted

12:36 PM CST (18:36 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.8 miles (1.2 km)

Path width

125 yards (114 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$55,000

County

Trigg County

Touchdown point

36.890, -87.987

Lift-off point

36.892, -87.973

Record number

1812311235-01

10 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 90 mph.

• Some trees blown eastward while the majority were blown northward - both uprooted and snapped.

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

A narrow line of showers and thunderstorms raced east-northeast across western Kentucky and southwest Indiana, producing pockets of damaging wind and a brief tornado. A deepening low pressure system tracked northeast from Arkansas across the St. Louis area to Indiana. To the east of this low, a warm front lifted north across the lower Ohio Valley in the morning, followed by unseasonably warm and moist air. A trailing cold front then moved east, triggering a narrow line of showers and thunderstorms along the Mississippi River by midday. This line of convection became sporadically severe as it raced across western Kentucky in the afternoon. Heavy rainfall caused some isolated flooding of creeks and roads.

A brief EF-1 tornado touched down just offshore in Lake Barkley near Blue Water Estates. The tornado tracked eastward through part of the subdivision, damaging at least six homes. The damage was minor, consisting mostly of loss of shingles and vinyl siding. There were some broken windows and screens blown in. Three garage doors were blown inward, and one garage lost shingles. A couple of dozen trees were snapped or uprooted. There were two separate eyewitness reports of a tornado. 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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

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 16:31 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 Ft Campbell radar (KHPX), 64 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:35 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 2018 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

2 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.