EF2 tornado, Corydon to Wells Store, Kentucky, March 28, 2020

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 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

March 28, 2020

Touchdown

7:58 PM CDT (00:58 UTC)

Lifted

8:12 PM CDT (01:12 UTC)

On the ground

14 minutes

Path length

16.8 miles (27.0 km)

Path width

500 yards (457 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$500,000

County

Henderson County

Touchdown point

37.742, -87.704

Lift-off point

37.863, -87.437

Record number

2003281858-01

147 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 122 mph.

• About 20 large trees uprooted in convergent directions.
• Storage trailer flipped over
• Three consecutive poles snapped.
• Wood and tin barn completely destroyed with debris scattered.

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

Numerous thunderstorms formed ahead of a cold front during the late afternoon. Some supercells and bowing line segments were embedded within the large area of convection through the evening hours. A couple of tornadoes occurred in northwest Kentucky. The bowing line segments produced isolated wind damage. The atmosphere was only marginally unstable, with surface-based capes around 1000. Strong wind shear was favorable for the organized storm structures, including a few supercells.

The tornado began in Corydon, passed across the southern outskirts of Henderson, and ended a mile or so west of Spottsville. The tornado did roof, siding, and fascia damage to dozens of homes along the path. At least a dozen barns or outbuildings sustained roof or structural damage. One large barn was completely destroyed, with debris scattered hundreds of yards from its foundation. The tornado moved northeast across the intersection of the Audubon Parkway and Highway 41 on the south side of Henderson. A Kentucky state road maintenance facility at that intersection sustained damage. A salt dome was destroyed, and a radio tower was blown down. Hundreds of trees were snapped or uprooted. Peak winds were estimated near 115 mph.

The tornado began on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, where it brought down several trees in the flooded bottomlands. The tornado spent the vast majority of its time in the Indiana county of Warrick, where it strengthened to EF-2 intensity at Newburgh.

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

7 minutes of warning. NWS PAH issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:51 UTC, 7 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 23:35 UTC and running to 03:25 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:06 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 Evansville,IN radar (KVWX), 53 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:59 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 2020 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

20 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.