EF3 tornado, Spring Grove to Boxville, Kentucky, May 16, 2025

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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF3

Date

May 16, 2025

Touchdown

7:16 PM CDT (00:16 UTC)

Lifted

7:29 PM CDT (00:29 UTC)

On the ground

13 minutes

Path length

9.9 miles (15.9 km)

Path width

500 yards (457 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

4

Property damage

$15 million

Crop damage

$100,000

County

Union County

Touchdown point

37.660, -88.048

Lift-off point

37.655, -87.868

Record number

2505161816-01

40 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF3. The highest wind the damage implies is 155 mph.

• Ground scouring noted in agricultural fields here.
• 1975 US Highway 60 West, Morganfield, KY. One story brick home mostly swept clear off foundation save for one wall. Walls appeared to be nailed to the foundation.
• Ground scaring where corn was ripped out from ground.
• Debris in fields and clear scouring where field is brown around the green on either side.

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

A 500mb shortwave trough moved across the Upper Midwest with height falls across the Quad State during the afternoon and evening of the 16th. The exit region of a strong (125kt) upper level jet was positioned across the area as well. Low-level winds strengthened during the afternoon to 50kts at 850mb. Following the early AM convection, ample sunshine allowed for a very unstable airmass to develop with CAPE of 3000-4000J/kg with deep layer shear of 65-70kts. Late afternoon, STP peaked at 9 near the Wabash/Ohio River confluence with effective SRH of 300-400m2/s2. Mid-level lapse rates peaked at 8-8.5C/km for much of the Quad State with significant hail parameter of 3-5 mid-afternoon and DCAPE peaking at 1200-1500J/kg. Initial storm formation was discrete with very large hail and tornadoes, with storms becoming more linear later in the evening with the approach of a cold front.||Afternoon supercells produced very large hail, especially in Ballard County, with pictures of hail estimated up to 4.5 inches in/near Barlow with many additional reports of ping pong ball to baseball size hail. Many windows were broken as a result, along with plenty of damage to gutters, roofs, vehicles, and siding. Many reports of ping pong to golf ball size hail with this supercell continued through McCracken County, increasing to tennis ball size in Livingston County. Baseball size hail also occurred south of Princeton in Caldwell County. Three tornadoes occurred with the late afternoon supercells. The southern two were an EF-1 southwest of Lamasco in Lyon County, and an EF-2 which tracked from near Ovil in Christian County to northeast of Allegre in Todd County. The northern tornado was an EF-3 in Union County, the fourth tornado from the supercell which initially produced the EF-4 in Williamson County, Illinois. With the Union County tornado, the worst of the damage was along Robinson Rd and Terre Hill Rd off of US-60 and Wildlife Rd off of KY-56.||During the evening hours, the storms organized into a linear structure, with straight-line wind damage taking over as the primary severe weather hazard. Three notable swaths of straight-line winds occurred: 1. Southeastern Marshall County, 2. Princeton in Caldwell County, and 3. Southwestern Trigg County from Cumberland Shores eastward near Donaldson Creek. Many houses were damaged with these storm lines, particularly in Princeton and Cumberland Shores. Straight-line wind damage was reported in many other parts of Western Kentucky, and one tornado occurred during the evening, an EF-2 south of Hopkinsville.

An EF-3 tornado with peak winds of 155 mph impacted the south side of Morganfield, KY, on the evening of May 16, 2025. The tornado began along Bunger Road where ground scouring of newly-planted crops was seen. Moving east, the tornado intensified,|doing EF-3 damage to several homes on Highway 130, Robinson Road, US Highway 60, Terre Hill Road, and Wildlife Road. Some homes suffered near catastrophic damage, with most roofs and most exterior walls removed. The tornado weakened after it crossed Highway 56 moving east, lifting near Kit Harris Road. The tornado reached a peak width of around 500 yards and caused four minor injuries along its 9.94 miles track.

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

20 minutes of warning. NWS PAH issued a tornado warning for this county at 23:56 UTC, 20 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:01 UTC and running to 02:06 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 19:31 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.

Sturgis (TWT), 13 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Evansville,IN radar (KVWX), 70 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:14 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 2025 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

26 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.