EF1 tornado, Tatumsville to Fairdealing, Kentucky, June 23, 2019

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

June 23, 2019

Touchdown

5:13 PM CDT (22:13 UTC)

Lifted

5:14 PM CDT (22:14 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.2 miles (0.4 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$1.0 million

County

Marshall County

Touchdown point

36.917, -88.219

Lift-off point

36.917, -88.215

Record number

1906231613-01

8 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.

• Marina roof support beams bent.
• Marina walkway and floats lifted and twisted. Damage path approximately 60 yards wide.
• Damage to marina roof and support columns. Damage approximately 50 yards to the west.
• A 50 yard section of marina of approximately 30 feet in height was lifted out of the water and flipped over. A boat was lifted out of the water and tossed onto the flipped marina. The entire marina structure was shifted several feet and pulled away from the shore.

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

Clusters of thunderstorms formed over western Kentucky early in the afternoon. Several of these storms produced large hail or damaging wind. However, the main event was a line of severe thunderstorms that entered southeast Missouri about mid-afternoon and then tracked east across western Kentucky late in the afternoon and early in the evening. Several EF-1 tornadoes were associated with this line, in addition to scattered pockets of wind damage. The storms occurred under a rather strong southwest wind flow ahead of a weak cold front over far western Missouri. A 500 mb shortwave trough over the western high Plains provided some additional support for the storms. The air mass was strongly unstable, with surface capes over 3000 j/kg.

A very brief tornado with maximum estimated winds of 100 mph damaged part of a marina on Kentucky Lake. A 50-yard section of the marina was twisted and overturned. This was one of three sections that extended into Kentucky Lake. A boat that was docked in this part of the marina was lifted onto the debris. The entire marina structure was shifted several feet and pulled away from the shore, dislodging several spud poles that anchored the floating marina structure to the lake bottom.

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

13 minutes of warning. NWS PAH issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:00 UTC, 13 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 22:30 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 18:04 UTC and running to 23:08 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. The outlook in force was issued at 19:46 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.

Murray (CEY), 31 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Paducah radar (KPAH), 52 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:15 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 2019 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

12 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.