EF1 tornado, Foraker, Kentucky, May 16, 2023

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 16, 2023

Touchdown

4:46 PM EDT (20:46 UTC)

Lifted

4:48 PM EDT (20:48 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.7 miles (1.1 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$1,000

Crop damage

$19,800

County

Magoffin County

Touchdown point

37.666, -83.122

Lift-off point

37.670, -83.116

Record number

2305161446-01

15 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS JKL, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 100 mph.

• High winds caused softwood trunks to snap. All trees were facing towards the path of the tornado - likely an inflow into the storm on the outskirts of the tornado.
• At least 12 trees up the drainage are snapped or uprooted in a convergent pattern.
• Pine uprooted up hillside, along with several snapped softwood trees behind it.
• Tin roofing from nearby barn thrown to the southeast.

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

The most widespread severe thunderstorm activity in many months broke out across eastern Kentucky on Tuesday, May 16th. A warm front lifted to near the Mountain Parkway during the morning hours, ushering in a muggy airmass for those locations to the south of the Parkway. Sun shining on this juicy air mass helped build up moderate amounts of instability south of the warm front as temperatures warmed into the upper 70s to mid 80s there. Meanwhile, persistent cloud cover and a weak northeasterly breeze north of the front kept temperatures cooler and conditions much more stable. A wave of low pressure rode along the stalled warm front during this afternoon, triggering supercell storms in the area between the warm front and the Hal Rogers Parkway/KY-80 corridor. These storms dropped severe to significant-sized hail. One of the supercells also produced a brief tornado in Magoffin County southwest of Salyersville. Further south, weaker shear led to less organized storm structures, but even there the storms still generated strong outflows leading to bowing storm lines and damaging wind gusts.

An NWS Survey Team, in conjunction with Magoffin County Emergency Management, confirmed that an EF-1 Tornado touched down on a hillside southwest of Board Tree Rd, crossed the road and then traveled through the holler/drainage along Williams Arnett Cemetery Rd. It then climbed up the adjacent ridgeline before weakening and dissipating. Several structures sustained minor damage, and many trees were snapped or uprooted.

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

1 minute of warning. NWS JKL issued a tornado warning for this county at 20:45 UTC, 1 minute before the tornado touched down, in force until 21:01 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 16:30 UTC and running to 21:50 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 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:37 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.

Jackson/J. Carroll (JKL), 19 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Jackson,KY radar (KJKL), 19 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:43 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 2023 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

3 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.