EF0 tornado, Jerico, Kentucky, March 15, 2026

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

   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. 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

EF0, preliminary

Date

March 15, 2026

Touchdown

9:45 PM CDT (02:45 UTC)

Lifted

9:46 PM CDT (02:46 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.8 miles (1.3 km)

Path width

40 yards (37 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Logan County

Touchdown point

36.982, -86.976

Lift-off point

36.986, -86.965

Highest wind the damage implies

85 mph

Surveyed by

NWS LMK

The office's name for it

Logan County Tornado

Survey last edited

March 18, 2026

Record number

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

The National Weather Service conducted a storm survey on Tuesday, March 17th for the storms that occurred on Sunday night, March 15th. A tornado was determined to have occurred in Logan County with max winds of 85 MPH (EF0).

Damage was first observed along Forgy Road where some large softwood trees were either uprooted or snapped. Due to the isolated nature of the damage, a lower bound was used at 80 mph as the max wind speed at this location. The tornado continued to the northeast along Duncan Ridge Road where more trees were uprooted. Moving east along Duncan Ridge Road, more trees were uprooted and a residence had shingle damage. Near Deer Lick Road (to the west of Lewisburg), there was a roof lofted off a storage outbuilding at a residence where wood planks were impaled in a couple of directions, one of which was in the opposite direction of the storm motion due to the tornado rotation. The max wind of 85 mph occurred at this residence. Additional tree damage was observed across Deer Lick Road.

The National Weather Service would like to thank Logan County Emergency Management for their assistance on the storm survey, as well as the helpful homeowners who allowed access to their properties.

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

10 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS LMK, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 85 mph.

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

During the late evening and overnight hours March 15th into March 16th, a strong upper level trough and associated cold front moved across the Ohio Valley. Ahead of the cold front, temperatures were in the 70s with dew point temperatures in the upper 50s and low 60s. This corridor of modest low-level destabilization contained between 250 and 500 J/kg of MLCAPE which was oriented immediately ahead of the surface front and the main line of showers and thunderstorms. With a corridor of 80 knot mid-level winds approaching from the west, effective bulk shear was between 40 and 50 knots for this event, creating a typical high-shear, low-CAPE setup for central Kentucky and southern Indiana. While the primary forcing mechanism was lifting along the cold front, resulting in a quasi-linear convective system, some scattered cells developed ahead of the main line of storms across western Kentucky. These storms had transient supercellular characteristics, and would go on to produce a swath of stronger winds and a few embedded tornadoes across Butler, Grayson, Breckinridge, Hardin, and Meade County. Elsewhere across Kentucky, scattered wind damage was produced by the main line of storms, with more favorably oriented segments of the line producing additional weak spin-up tornadoes. As the line of storms pushed east toward the I-75 corridor early in the morning on March 16th, there was a general weakening trend as MLCAPE values dropped to only around 100 J/kg across the Bluegrass. However, the portion of the line across southern Kentucky had access to slightly greater instability, resulting in additional instances of wind damage and a spin-up tornado in Clinton County. The line of storms eventually pushed into eastern Kentucky by around 3 AM on March 16th, with much cooler air rushing into the region behind the cold front.

The National Weather Service conducted a storm survey on Tuesday, March 17th for the storms that occurred on Sunday night, March 15th. A tornado was determined to have occurred in Logan County with max winds of 85 MPH (EF0).||Damage was first observed along Forgy Road where some large softwood trees were either uprooted or snapped. Due to the isolated nature of the damage, a lower bound was used at 80 mph as the max wind speed at this location. The tornado continued to the northeast along Duncan Ridge Road where more trees were uprooted. Moving east along Duncan Ridge Road, more trees were uprooted and a residence had shingle damage. Near Deer Lick Road (to the west of Lewisburg), there was a roof lofted off a storage outbuilding at a residence where wood planks were impaled in a couple of |directions, one of which was in the opposite direction of the storm motion due to the tornado rotation. The max wind of 85 mph occurred at this residence. Additional tree damage was observed across Deer Lick Road.

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 00:27 UTC and running to 03:46 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 00:43 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.

Greenville (M21), 32 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Ft Campbell radar (KHPX), 39 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:31 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

43 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.