EF1 tornado in Graves County, Kentucky

The damage path began on the west side of U.S. Highway 45 near the community of Hickory. In this area, a pole was bent and there was major loss of roofing from a small barn. This is where the tornado was rated at its peak intensity of EF-1, with 90 mph winds. Along the rest of the path through Graves County, the only damage consisted of spotty broken branches and a few downed trees. The tornado exited into Marshall County northeast of the community of Clear Springs.

A couple of lines of thunderstorms moved northeast across far western Kentucky during the late afternoon and evening hours. The first line consisted of semi-discrete cells, one of which was associated with a weak tornado that tracked across the Kentucky Lake area. The second line was associated with a few isolated marginally severe wind gusts to 60 mph. The storms developed in response to a rather amplified 500 mb shortwave trough that progressed east into Iowa and Missouri by nightfall. With daytime heating, the atmosphere became very unstable in the afternoon. Mixed-layer capes were around 3000 j/kg late in the day. A belt of 35 to 45 knot mid-level west-southwesterly winds resulted in sufficient deep-layer wind shear for organized storm structures. An embedded tornado occurred in the vicinity of a residual outflow boundary arcing west from storms over central Kentucky.