EF0 tornado, Sharpsburg to Reynoldsville, Kentucky, April 2, 2024

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

April 2, 2024

Touchdown

9:39 AM EDT (13:39 UTC)

Path length

0.1 miles (0.2 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$40,000

County

Bath County

Touchdown point

38.215, -83.832

Lift-off point

38.215, -83.832

Record number

2404020739-01

40 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS JKL, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 95 mph.

• Part of roofing peeled off and wall caved in. Nearby dollar general store also had some damage to gutters and large items blown around.
• Greenhouse covers are off on Shields Road
• Multiples trees snapped and limbs broken in a path about 600 yards long. All going same direction eastward.
• Tin roof of auction building blown off and blown eastward.

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

Eastern Kentucky's first substantial severe weather day of 2024 occurred on April 2nd, as a rapidly intensifying low pressure system tracked just northwest of the area. The first round of severe weather occurred between 9 AM and 12 PM as a line of severe thunderstorms raced eastward and impacted many locations near and north of the Mountain Parkway. Along this line, several surges and pockets of circulation developed over the Bluegrass. Bath County suffered the brunt of the line, with many instances of straight line wind damage, though substantial damage was also observed in Fleming and Rowan counties. Pockets of damage were also noted in most other counties along and north of the Parkway. An NWS storm survey estimated that winds reached 70 to 90 knots in three northwest to southeast-oriented swaths across Bath County. A couple of brief spin-up tornadoes also appear to have occurred within 2 of the swaths near the communities of Sharpsburg and Reynoldsville. ||Once the late morning thunderstorm activity weakened, a messy mixture of showers and a few thunderstorms lifted across eastern Kentucky through the afternoon. Severe weather was not observed again until early evening when a couple of supercell thunderstorms developed over central/eastern Tennessee and moved into southeast Kentucky. The first storm, tracking northeast just east of Pine Mountain, produced a swath of hail up to half dollar size, though much of it likely fell in remote and rugged terrain. A second supercell thunderstorm moved northeast across the Cumberland River basin and eventually weakened over the basin of the South Fork Kentucky River. This storm produced pockets of wind damage, the most severe of which was observed in northeast Whitley County where many trees, multiple structures and an RV park suffered significant damage. An NWS storm survey found damage consistent with winds gusts of 80 to 90 mph in this area about 7 miles southwest of Corbin. Additional details on this straight line wind event in Whitley County and also the straight line wind/tornado event in the Bluegrass are available here and here, respectively.

A quick spin up occurred as winds descended to the ground in NW Bath County, hitting a house on top of a ridge off of Springfield Road (south of Sharpsburg), along with trees and a barn in the adjacent holler to the east. From this point forward, the event became more straight-line wind dominated and continued to be so throughout much of the county. The house sustained substantial damage. A large section of roofing was removed, including a large hole into the master closet. All windows around entire house had been bowed in, bending the frames and cracking the molding around them. Grass, dirt, insulation, and other small debris was also plastered to windows, doors, and siding on all sides of the house, including on all sides of a sheltered screen in porch. Flashing was also removed from inside the sheltered porch. Basement doors on other side of sheltering retaining wall were buckled in by the force of the wind (and possible change in pressure). House also had multiple cracks along the exterior brick-work that were not there before. In addition, it moved several things outside, including a large trailer holding the front of a combine, twisting the tongue of the trailer. Debris from the house was blown several hundred yards away, and some has not yet been found. Farther down from the house, numerous trees and a barn was hit. The barn is still standing, but sustained substantial damage to the SE corner.

Straight line winds pushed through Mount Pleasant Road from west to east, resulting in damage to structures on both the north and south side of this mobile home. However, the mobile home, which set in the middle of the damage, showed signs of rotation as the system moved through, indicative of a quick spin-up tornado. All damage that was viewed downstream by the survey team seemed to be more in line with straight-line winds as well, so this was likely a very quick spin-up. There was a lack of structures behind this mobile home, and a lack of damage across the street to the east of this home. It matched up well with one of the tighter circulations that went through the area. The mobile home itself was hit from the backside, lifting off the roof on the back half of the house. Siding was torn off on all sides. The front of the house's roofline was a bit rotted, but lost it's flashing. Insulation and mud was plastered along the front side. Meanwhile, more mud and insulation was plastered all through the inside of the house as well.

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

5 minutes of warning. NWS JKL issued a tornado warning for this county at 13:34 UTC, 5 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 14:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 10:55 UTC and running to 15:04 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 12:32 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 Jackson,KY radar (KJKL), 83 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 13:37 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 2024 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

68 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 69 of them

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.