EF1 tornado, La Center, Kentucky, May 1, 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

May 1, 2019

Touchdown

6:08 AM CDT (11:08 UTC)

Lifted

6:09 AM CDT (11:09 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.6 miles (0.9 km)

Path width

85 yards (78 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$35,000

County

Ballard County

Touchdown point

37.062, -88.984

Lift-off point

37.066, -88.975

Record number

1905010508-01

13 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 97 mph.

• Part of roof uplifted on outbuilding. Doors blown in and base of exterior wall shifted.
• 20 x 25 foot section of roof was lifted from a house and tossed about 120 feet to the east and wedged into the ground.
• Metal basketball goal bent by wind.

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

A line of thunderstorms organized over southeast Missouri and moved eastward into far western Kentucky. Along the leading edge of the line, low-level wind shear was strong enough for a brief tornado. The storms occurred in a fairly strong southwest wind flow ahead of a cold front that extended from northern Illinois to west central Missouri.

A National Weather Service damage survey determined EF-1 tornado damage occurred near La Center, with maximum peak winds of 105 mph. The tornado began about one-half mile south-southwest of La Center along Kentucky Highway 802. Several trees lost large limbs, and a few large trees were snapped along the path. A 20-by-25 foot section of roof on a home on Kentucky Highway 358 was lifted and thrown about 150 feet. A nearby storage building had its doors blown in, and the base of an exterior wall was shifted by a couple of feet. A few other homes in the vicinity received minor shingle damage. The tornado lifted shortly after crossing Highway 358, about half a mile southeast of La Center.

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.

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 Marginal Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:54 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), 18 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 11:07 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

9 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.