EF1 tornado, Louisville, Kentucky, July 4, 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

July 4, 2024

Touchdown

1:27 PM EDT (17:27 UTC)

Lifted

1:28 PM EDT (17:28 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.5 miles (0.8 km)

Path width

170 yards (155 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Jefferson County

Touchdown point

38.234, -85.802

Lift-off point

38.232, -85.793

Record number

2407041127-01

42 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 95 mph.

• Rotten tree snapped at v 7 feet up
• Splatter wuth fresh leaf? North side of house
• Part of fence down. Tree has several branches twisted aloft.
• Large tree cause of power outage, smapped 2 poles as it came down.

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

A slow-moving cold front lingered near the Ohio Valley from July 3rd through July 5th, with multiple rounds of showers and thunderstorms moving through the area during this time period. While most of the thunderstorms were not severe, a few instances of wind damage were observed in the Louisville metro. Additionally, a brief spin-up EF1 tornado occurred in west Louisville on July 4th. The cold front finally moved through the area during the evening on July 5th, bringing an end to this period of active weather.

A National Weather Service storm survey determined an EF1 tornado briefly touched down in West Louisville during the early afternoon hours on July 4th. The tornado initially caused a broad swath of damage, with the damage path becoming more narrow before lifting. ||The damage began to a Baptist Fellowship Center just north of |Woodland Avenue along Catalpa Street. The nearby church sustained shingle |damage, but also had some window damage on the more protected |north facing side of the building. South of Woodland Avenue, a |witness saw twisting motion, and there a black walnut tree branch |fell to the west onto a neighbor's house and a tree from that home |fell onto his truck. As the tornado tightened up, several tree|branches fell onto vehicles and structures. A few bigger trees|were uprooted as well, including one that pulled down some power|poles as it fell. In another place, the tornado pulled back part|of a roof on a two-story residence. Farther east, the vinyl|siding was stripped off a north-facing wall of another two-story|residence. ||As the tornado continued east and east southeast, crossing Wilson Avenue, it narrowed quite a bit, causing more isolated tree damage before it lifted just east of 23rd Street and north of Standard Avenue.

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 severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 17:01 UTC and running to 18:46 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 16:30 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 Louisville radar (KLVX), 31 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 17:26 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

4 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.