Flash Flood — Simpson, Kentucky

2024-05-09 · near Franklin, Simpson, Kentucky

Event narrative

Two water rescues had to be performed and multiple roads were closed across Simpson County due to flash flooding.

Wider weather episode

On May 8th and 9th, 2024, a quasi-stationary frontal boundary was draped from west to east across the Ohio Valley. Storms from the previous evening across southern Indiana and north central Kentucky had helped to stabilized the environment in those locations, though areas in southern Kentucky still had a good amount of instability and shear to work with during the afternoon and evening hours on May 8th. Early in the afternoon, discrete cells, with some supercells, produced hail and some rotation, though no tornadoes were reported. By mid-to-late afternoon, most of the storms merged into multicell clusters with some bowing lines producing scattered wind damage. Late in the evening into the early morning hours of May 9th, continued waves of heavy rainfall produced considerable flash flooding along the Kentucky and Tennessee border, resulting in one fatality in Allen County.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (36.7388, -86.5460)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1188689. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.