Hail — Laurel, Kentucky

2024-09-24 · near Lida, Laurel, Kentucky

Event narrative

A member of the public reported up to 1 inch hail in eastern Laurel County near KY-80.

Wider weather episode

Unusually mild and humid weather spread across eastern Kentucky leading up to September 24th as the Ohio Valley became firmly entrenched within the warm sector of a low pressure system. Multiple rounds of showers and storms, apparently sparked by passing upper-level disturbances aloft, worked across the area. One of these disturbances coincided with peak heating/destabilization and moderately strong wind shear during the late afternoon and evening of September 24th. It was within this favorable environment that multiple rotating supercell thunderstorms developed over Middle Tennessee and Southcentral Kentucky where the strongest shear coincided with moderate instability.

Two of these supercells became intense, producing swaths of hail with diameter to between golf and baseball size. The first cell tracked from northern Cumberland City to just north of Corbin, pummeling the northern McCreary and northern Whitley counties with the largest reported hail of day. Another developing cell lifted north out of Scott County, Tennessee and rapidly organized into behemoth supercell north of Williamsburg, reaching peak intensity over the rural portions of far eastern Laurel County and west central Clay County before weakening north of Burning Springs. Outside of these hail swaths, instances of wind damage and smaller hail were reported, mostly in the Cumberland River basin.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (37.0821, -83.9220)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1218554. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.