EF1 Tornado — Russell, Kentucky

2023-06-25 · near Jamestown, Russell, Kentucky

Event narrative

A tornado touched down just east of US 127, north of Woolen Mill Road, in an area of mostly open fields with patches of trees along fence rows. Damage could be seen in the tree tops lowering until reaching the ground. The tornado moved eastward towards

West Cumberland Avenue in western Jamestown. While plowing through clusters of trees, tree damage was highly focused with many mature healthy trees being snapped. As the tornado approached a set of apartment buildings on the 1100 block of West Cumberland Avenue, views from an aerial drone showed heavy tree damage with trees falling in several directions. A roof from one of the buildings blew off to a southwest direction. A large window from across the street at the auto museum got sucked out and ended up in the roadway. To the north, large sections of the roof at Jamestown Auto Sales got peeled back from the northwest to the southeast.

The main tornado track continued east while a small suction vortex fed into the main rotation near Telephone Drive. Along Telephone Drive, a large tree was uprooted and fell to the southeast while two well built buildings had their gable porch roofs blown to the north. One remained attached to the roof while the other was blown to the northeast over the building, coming to rest behind C&W Auto Parts which had its own

southeast facing window blown out. All three of these buildings had mud splattered on their southeast facing exterior wall.

Farther east in the main tornado track, the tornado damaged a large area of the Carpet Center's roof. Just to the south, a single family home had half of its roof blown off. To the north and east of the Carpet Center, the strongest damage was done at a residence. A garage made out of cinder blocks was completely leveled by 110 mph winds on two sides while the other two sides saw nothing remain above the windows. Every tree in the area was severely damaged. Multiple trees fell on the house and the

owners vehicles. A limb of a tree punched through the wall and was in the house. Multiple large trees continued to get uprooted as the tornado traveled eastward before lifting near Brown Road.

Wider weather episode

An anomalously strong mid- and upper-level trough for late June moved across the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley from the afternoon hours on June 25th through the morning hours on June 26th. A 60-70 kt 500 mb jet bisected the mid-Mississippi Valley, placing central Kentucky and southern Indiana in the left exit region, contributing to broad rising motion over the area. Near the surface, a well-defined cold front crossed the Mississippi River during the mid-to-late afternoon hours on June 25th, with temperatures in the upper 80s and lower 90s and dewpoints in the upper 60s and lower 70s in the warm sector ahead of the front. In the warm sector, mixed-layer CAPE of 2500-3500 J/kg provided plenty of fuel for convective development aside from the aforementioned favorable jet forcing. With 25-35 knots of flow at 850 mb, there was also ample vertical wind shear across the region, with effective bulk shear values generally above 45 kt, leading to the development of supercellular structures. The parameter space was favorable for all severe hazards. 0-1 km storm-relative helicity was over 200 m2/s2 and significant tornado parameter values were frequently greater than 1, suggesting the potential for rotating mesocyclones and tornadoes. Downdraft CAPE was over 1200 J/kg along and west of Interstate 65, suggesting the potential for strong winds from any formidable downdrafts. Finally, sufficient mid-level lapse rates and significant hail parameter values warranted concerns for severe hail. As would be expected given the parameter space, all severe hazards were observed, with a couple tornadoes and numerous straight-line wind and hail reports across southern Indiana and central Kentucky. Straight-line winds of up to 100 mph and multiple reports of golf ball or larger size hail serve as evidence of the highly unusual setup across the Ohio and Tennessee valleys June 25th and 26th.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (36.9757, -85.0861)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1118190. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.