EF0 tornado, Viola to Boaz, Kentucky, March 14, 2019

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

March 14, 2019

Touchdown

11:27 AM CDT (16:27 UTC)

Lifted

11:28 AM CDT (16:28 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.7 miles (1.1 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$2,000

County

Graves County

Touchdown point

36.857, -88.634

Lift-off point

36.865, -88.628

Record number

1903141027-01

83 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 125 mph.

• at least 4 cars impaled by debris with windows broken out
• 100 yard wide path of minor roof/shingle damage to several businesses and a hotel. A small pine tree was uprooted.
• Several sheets of a metal roof were peeled back off of a metal storage building.
• 4 vans or busses with major damage and blown out windows. Carport blown 200 yards SE.

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

A strong low pressure system produced multiple weather hazards. Scattered supercell thunderstorms developed ahead of a cold front on the morning and early afternoon of the 14th, producing isolated wind damage, large hail, and several tornadoes. The supercells were preceded by widespread rain and thunderstorms the previous night, which caused some pockets of flooding in western Kentucky. The low pressure center tracked northeast across the Plains to the Great Lakes region.

Two large trees were uprooted, and several tree limbs were broken. A picture of the tornado was taken from Hickory. Peak winds in this short-lived tornado were estimated near 80 mph.

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

14 minutes of warning. NWS PAH issued a tornado warning for this county at 16:13 UTC, 14 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 16:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 14:50 UTC and running to 18:04 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 12:52 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), 26 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 16:29 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

31 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.