EF0 Tornado — Shelby, Kentucky

2023-05-07 · near Joyes, Shelby, Kentucky

Event narrative

A Valero gas station sign was pushed to the east and towards Highway 55 (Taylorsville Road), with some of the sign damage thrown across Highway 55 onto Pearce Industrial Road. The next damage was at the Black and Decker plant off of Harry Long Road. There was significant roofing damage across several portions of the roof to be lifted and thrown 30-40 yards. All of the debris from the roof was pushed to the east-southeast.

There were 3 business and home videos that all faced toward the Black and Decker warehouse, where you can definitely see a narrow funnel in contact with the ground. This was key to this tornado rating as drone photography showed almost no damage between the Valero Gas Station and B & D roof structure. There was not a single tree

snapped or twisted and a large cell tower right in its path had no damage. Based on the videos and the damage to the B & D roofing structure, the survey team came up with a EF0 75 mph rating, with a width of 30 yards.

The survey team drove across several intersecting roads within a two mile radius along old Finchville Road over to Zaring Mill Road and found no other damage.

Wider weather episode

During the late morning and afternoon hours on May 7th, an occasionally broken line of strong-to-severe thunderstorms moved from north to south across central Kentucky. These storms were not associated with any low-level front; however, they were the continuation of convection which fired during the late evening hours on May 6th over northern Illinois and had moved south-southeastward along with a mid-level shortwave disturbance transiting along the top edge of larger scale ridging. Ahead of the line of storms, a moderately unstable environment existed. Initially, around 500 J/kg MLCAPE was present as storms approached the Interstate 64 corridor; this increased to between 1000-2000 J/kg later in the day across south central Kentucky as the atmosphere had more time to destabilize. Wind shear was modest at best, but was sufficient to keep storms going across the region. Most portions of the line of storms were sub-severe, but a few isolated areas of severe winds, hail, and one tornado occurred as the line moved through central Kentucky.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (38.2050, -85.2667)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1103483. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.