EF1 tornado, Dixon Town to Brannon, Kentucky, April 2, 2024

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

April 2, 2024

Touchdown

9:18 AM EDT (13:18 UTC)

Lifted

9:19 AM EDT (13:19 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.4 miles (0.7 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Jessamine County

Touchdown point

37.937, -84.548

Lift-off point

37.933, -84.543

Record number

2404020718-01

80 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LMK, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 110 mph.

• Trees all along this road cleaned up alrrady
• Resident was in detached garage WSW of the house. Saw rain move in two directions. West facing wall of house impacted by winds buckled the garage door and the side of the house above it no longer is plumb.
• Insulatuon blown into back porch
• Few trees here. Home nearby had 2nd floor window pop out of frame and fall to the ground.

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

As a surface low cut across Missouri and Illinois, its eastward stretching warm front moved north across central Indiana while its cold front moved east towards the Lower Ohio Valley. This placed central Kentucky in the warm sector, where 3 separate lines of convection moved through during the day. The first line of storms generating from an early morning outflow boundary dropped southeast through the area. This produced six tornadoes, mainly through the Bluegrass region. The second line, moving west to east, just produced some passing showers and thunderstorms. The third line, just ahead of the cold front, moved through during the evening hours. This produced three more tornadoes along the Interstate 71 corridor. One of these tornadoes began in Clark County, Indiana before crossing the Ohio River into Kentucky.

After the tornado crossed into Jessamine County from Woodford County, the tornado took a bit of left turn towards a property where it caused damage to multiple structures. Two barns were demolished and another had significant roof damage. One barn was pushed in two directions off its stone foundation. The damage path for part of the barn went to the southeast and another part went farther downstream to the northeast. The tornado broke a couple more limbs before lifting. The EF1 tornado was on the ground for a total of 1.82 miles from where it began in Woodford County and ended in Jessamine County.

The National Weather Service conducted a storm damage assessment survey in Jessamine County from the storms mid-morning, April 2.||The tornado touched down on the northeast side of Nicholasville off of US 27 just south of the Sam's Club, but north of the Providence school. The tornado touched down just west of US 27 by storage shed roadside company. Two of the storage sheds were picked up and thrown onto the highway. Winds speeds were 90 mph (EF1), with a damage width of 75 yards. ||The tornado crossed US 27 and increased in speed and size, going into the Park Central Industrial Park doing the most extensive damage of the short tornado track. Many buildings and warehouses had significant portions of their roof torn apart, doors blown |out, and wall panels pulled away from their buildings. Buildings that did not lose any part of the roof had numerous shingles removed from the top of the roofs.||There were impalements of boards and drywall into surrounding buildings and the ground. Winds speeds were 110 mph, EF1, with a width of 150 yards. A car lot had 3 vehicles picked up and flipped over and a very heavy travel trailer was moved 20 yards and shifted 30 degrees to the east northeast. Debris from the industrial park was thrown into a heavily wooded area and thrown in directions from the east northeast all the way to the southeast.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 10:59 UTC and running to 14:58 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.

Lexington/Bluegrass (LEX), 13 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), 115 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 13:19 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.