EF0 tornado, West Clifty, Kentucky, March 25, 2021

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 25, 2021

Touchdown

9:16 PM CDT (02:16 UTC)

Lifted

9:17 PM CDT (02:17 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

1.0 miles (1.6 km)

Path width

40 yards (37 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Grayson County

Touchdown point

37.483, -86.156

Lift-off point

37.487, -86.142

Record number

2103252016-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LMK, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 85 mph.

• Large 30 x 40 barn destroyed with being thrown into one story residential home

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

Early in the day, low level wind shear was very strong. A stable layer over the area allowed a warm front to bring sunshine and warmer temperatures to the region, but the warming surface temperatures caused the stable layer to erode and become unstable. The high shear environment allowed storms, ahead of a cold front, to become severe and severe hail, damaging winds, and three tornadoes resulted.

The National Weather Service conducted the storm survey. ||A bow echo passed through Grayson County and quickly spun up just south of Clarkson. It dropped a very brief tornado at 3900 Millerstown Road. A large 30ft x 40ft garage was mostly destroyed. A large beam from the garage was thrown into the sidewall of the home residence adjacent to the garage. The house also sustained some minor roof, siding, and gutter damage. ||Across the street, a one-story family residence sustained roof and shingle damage with one of the front windows blown out. ||Debris from the garage and one-story family residence was thrown up to a quarter-mile eastward into the forest. There were a couple of snapped and uprooted trees in the forest, but the most impressive damage was just beyond the small wooded area where a very noticeable ground grinding swirl could be seen across the farmers field. It measured approximately 40 yards wide, which was seen very clearly from a NWS aerial drone. ||There were no signs of any damage beyond the farmers field, where the swirls ended abruptly.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:57 UTC and running to 02:31 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 01:00 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.

Elizabethtown (EKX), 30 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Louisville radar (KLVX), 57 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:18 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 2021 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

19 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.