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EF1 tornado in Lawrence County, Kentucky

Tornado August 7, 2023 · Lawrence County, Kentucky

EF1

Rating

6.3 mi

Whole path

400 yd

Path width

$23K

Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Lawrence County → Wayne County, West Virginia; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 400 yards (0.23 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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

An EF1 tornado touched down just east of Yatesville Lake, uprooting or snapping several large trees on Aspen Drive and on Birch Road. Three houses were damaged by fallen trees on Birch Road with one home suffering extensive damage to the attached garage as a large tree fell on it. The tornado then tracked eastward, skipping along an almost six and a half mile track, crossing US 23 and the Big Sandy River just north of Louisa before continuing into West Virginia. A roughly 400 yard wide swath of rather extensive tree damage occurred on the west side of the Big Sandy River near a logging yard and two semi trailers were overturned at that location.

The wider storm

Numerous showers and thunderstorms were observed in northeast Kentucky on the afternoon of August 7th. This came as the result of an encroaching cold front and preceding unstable conditions. Dew points rose into the low to upper 60s that afternoon, allowing for developing storms to thrive as they crossed through Kentucky.

While most of the storms imposed damaging wind gusts and resulting downed trees, one storm in particular spawned an EF1 tornado. NWS Charleston investigated the resulting damaging the next day and determined that the tornado initially touched down east of Yatesville Lake and continued onward to the Kentucky and West Virginia line. On the Kentucky side, this tornado caused roughly a 400 yard wide swath of extensive tree damage in the Louisa area, along with two overturned semi trailers.

Began near Yatesville (38.1331, -82.6784).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1124201. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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