EF1 tornado, Graves County, Kentucky, August 19, 2026

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, as surveyed

EF1, preliminary

Date

August 19, 2026

Touchdown

11:59 PM CDT (04:59 UTC)

Lifted

12:01 AM CDT (05:01 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

0.3 miles (0.5 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Graves County

Touchdown point

36.855, -88.671

Lift-off point

36.855, -88.665

Highest wind the damage implies

105 mph

Surveyed by

NWS PAH

The office's name for it

Viola, KY

Survey last edited

August 22, 2026

Record number

None yet. SPC numbers 2026 in the spring of 2027.

Evidence of a tornado exists at the intersection of KY 408 and US 45 near the community of Viola. A large industrial metal building system had garage and roof panels removed with missiling of insulation onto north and east facing surfaces. A gas station/restaurant across the street had its canopy blown over and adjacent outbuildings were knocked over/damaged. It is possible this was part of a continuous path from the initial tornado near Lowe's however radar evidence suggests this was a separate process and the evidence linking the two would have been covered by the intense macroburst winds that occurred across the remainder of the northern portion of Graves County.

Written by NWS PAH in the NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit. A survey is revised as better evidence arrives.

42 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS PAH, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 105 mph.

• Several trees or tree limbs across Duncan facing West
• Tons of tree limbs and debris on the west side of the road here covering multiple acres along with a couple of snapped trees all facing east southeast
• Lots of tree limbs down across the road in this location and snapped rotten tree trunks
• Many tree limbs down, some very large and on top of structures.

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

13 minutes of warning. NWS PAH issued a tornado warning for this county at 04:46 UTC, 13 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 05:15 UTC.

The county was under a severe thunderstorm watch, issued at 02:44 UTC and running to 10:00 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 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 01:00 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 Paducah radar (KPAH), 25 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 04:58 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 2026 tornado in KentuckyEvery tornado in Kentucky since 1950Warnings in force in Kentucky nowThe forecast where you are

2 more have been surveyed in the United States that day, so far.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. A survey can be revised, so the rating, the path and the casualties can all still change.

NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit, the record the survey teams file from the damage, and NOAA Storm Prediction Center storm reports. Neither is the official database for 2026, which SPC publishes in the spring of 2027.