EF1 Tornado — Jessamine, Kentucky

2024-04-02 · near Brannon, Jessamine, Kentucky

Event narrative

The National Weather Service conducted a storm damage assessment survey in Jessamine County from the storms mid-morning, April 2.

The tornado touched down on the northeast side of Nicholasville off of US 27 just south of the Sam's Club, but north of the Providence school. The tornado touched down just west of US 27 by storage shed roadside company. Two of the storage sheds were picked up and thrown onto the highway. Winds speeds were 90 mph (EF1), with a damage width of 75 yards.

The tornado crossed US 27 and increased in speed and size, going into the Park Central Industrial Park doing the most extensive damage of the short tornado track. Many buildings and warehouses had significant portions of their roof torn apart, doors blown

out, and wall panels pulled away from their buildings. Buildings that did not lose any part of the roof had numerous shingles removed from the top of the roofs.

There were impalements of boards and drywall into surrounding buildings and the ground. Winds speeds were 110 mph, EF1, with a width of 150 yards. A car lot had 3 vehicles picked up and flipped over and a very heavy travel trailer was moved 20 yards and shifted 30 degrees to the east northeast. Debris from the industrial park was thrown into a heavily wooded area and thrown in directions from the east northeast all the way to the southeast.

Wider weather episode

As a surface low cut across Missouri and Illinois, its eastward stretching warm front moved north across central Indiana while its cold front moved east towards the Lower Ohio Valley. This placed central Kentucky in the warm sector, where 3 separate lines of convection moved through during the day. The first line of storms generating from an early morning outflow boundary dropped southeast through the area. This produced six tornadoes, mainly through the Bluegrass region. The second line, moving west to east, just produced some passing showers and thunderstorms. The third line, just ahead of the cold front, moved through during the evening hours. This produced three more tornadoes along the Interstate 71 corridor. One of these tornadoes began in Clark County, Indiana before crossing the Ohio River into Kentucky.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (37.9372, -84.5483)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1176619. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.