Unrated tornado, Tyler, Kentucky, May 8, 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 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. Unratedthis tornado

   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

Unrated

Date

May 8, 2024

Touchdown

4:01 PM CDT (21:01 UTC)

Lifted

4:02 PM CDT (21:02 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.2 miles (0.3 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

McCracken County

Touchdown point

37.018, -88.600

Lift-off point

37.019, -88.597

Record number

2405081501-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry.

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

A major outbreak of severe weather occurred on the 8th for the Quad State region. On the synoptic scale, a longwave trough was centered across the Rockies with deep-layer southwesterly flow from the Southern Plains to the Ohio Valley. A 110 kt upper jet extended from northern KS to IA while a 60 kt mid-level jet was positioned across northern MZ into IA. Surface low pressure near the MZ/KS border lifted to St. Louis around 12am CST on the 9th. A warm frontal boundary stretched across the Quad State, with a cold front extending southward from the surface low. ||The environment became unstable by early afternoon, especially in far Western Kentucky, with MLCAPE of 2000-3000 J/kg. Deep-layer shear was on the order of 55-65 kts, though low-level shear was 15 kts, increasing to 20 kts later in the day. SRH was around 100-2000 m2/s2 with higher values north towards Clarksville, TN. STP values were 2-3 due to deep-layer shear and instability. Supercell activity was more prominent during the afternoon in Western Kentucky with lapse rates of 6.5-7 C/km aiding with hail production.||For Southwest Kentucky, a sub-severe line of storms moved through with a cold front during the overnight hours from the 7th-8th. The front reversed and lifted northward during the morning, producing thunderstorm wind damage in the Purchase area, particularly in and around Calvert City. Supercell development occurred during the afternoon hours with widespread hail and thunderstorm wind damage. An EF-U tornado was identified in eastern McCracken County. Several counties were hit multiple times over the course of the afternoon into the evening as lines of storms entered Northwest Kentucky from Southern Illinois. Daviess County experienced widespread significant wind damage in and west of Owensboro between 2030-2100CST, including 3 tornadoes (2 EF-0 and 1 EF-1). A powerful outflow boundary from the Daviess County storms pushed through Livermore producing a mile wide swath of significant wind damage. A final line of thunderstorms pushed through Western Kentucky late evening past midnight, with limited severe weather. ||Torrential rainfall produced flooding impacts across Western Kentucky. A northern high rain total swath extended from Union County to southern Daviess/McLean Counties with 3-5 inches of rain. Being the location where the cold front stalled out and reversed, early morning rainfall totals were already elevated from Marshall/Calloway County to Todd County and further south in Tennessee. Heavy rains from afternoon supercells increased flooding issues, including washing out part of a road in Trigg County, while continued heavy rainfall late evening into the overnight hours left numerous roads flooded in Trigg County and in Hopkinsville. Rainfall totals were 5-8 inches in portions of Marshall and Trigg Counties and southernmost portions of Christian and Todd Counties. Both the Bypass and 68/80 gages on the South Fork of the Little River in Hopkinsville reached minor flood, and significant rainfall totals on the Green River resulted in Paradise reaching moderate flood stage a couple days later.

Several videos and eye witness reports indicate a brief tornado touchdown. The path length and width are estimated from those videos. The tornado caused no damage from which an EF rating could be assigned.

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 15:29 UTC and running to 23:52 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 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 19:32 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.

Paducah/Barkley (PAH), 16 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Paducah radar (KPAH), 16 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 21:02 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

52 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.