EF0 tornado in Shelby County, Kentucky

Tornado March 31, 2023 · Shelby County, Kentucky

EF0

Rating

4.0 mi

Whole path

100 yd

Path width

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Jefferson County → Shelby County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

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The path drawn at its surveyed width of 100 yards (0.06 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

This tornado formed approximately 1.4 miles north of Avoca near the Gene Snyder Freeway and tracked east-northeast for approximately 2.7 miles before exiting Jefferson County and into northwest Shelby County.

In Shelby County, the twister did sporadic wind damage along Crabapple Lane. Trees were snapped and twisted and some uprooted. Wind speeds were between 80 and 85 mph and the width decreased to less than 100 yards. The tornado crossed Kentucky Route 362 (Ash Ave) along the southern portion of Persimmon Ridge Golf Club. The main damage was shingle loss to homes, and sporadic tree damage.

The last damage point was along Persimmon Ridge Road, paralleling Aiken Road.

The wider storm

During the night of March 31 into April 1, a low pressure system, moving east across the Upper Midwest towards the Great Lakes, dragged a trailing cold front through the Lower Ohio Valley. This produced a broken line of severe storms that moved west to east over parts of central Kentucky, resulting in multiple reports of tree damage, isolated structural damage, and a tornado that affected Jefferson and Shelby Counties.

Began near Conner (38.2790, -85.4490).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1095734. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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