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EF1 tornado in Fulton County, Kentucky

Tornado November 18, 2025 · Fulton County, Kentucky

EF1

Rating

5.6 mi

Path length

30 yd

Path width

$40K

Damage as recorded

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 30 yards (0.02 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

A narrow EF-1 tornado (peak winds of 100mph) began on KY-94 just east of Hickman. The tornado then slowly moved southeast, mostly across open fields, doing sporadic minor tree damage before snapping 3 power poles along and near KY-166. The tornado ended near Rice Lane south of KY-166. Photos from the event show a very narrow funnel consistent with the narrow damage path.

The wider storm

A surface low drifted southeastward from Missouri through Southern Illinois and Western Kentucky during the evening hours of the 18th. Areas to the south with some afternoon clearing allowed for instability to develop, resulting in the formation of multiple clusters of storms that tracked southeastward. The most prominent of these clusters strengthened in far Southeast Missouri, moving across the Mississippi River into far Western Kentucky, at times developing embedded supercell structure. This cluster produced a tornado in Fulton County which tracked southeastward from KY-94 to KY-166 near the Tennessee border, breaking multiple power polls along the way. Effective bulk shear peaked at around 50kts near the Missouri/Kentucky border with DCAPE of 800J/kg to go along with the MLCAPE of over 1000J/kg. Precipitable water peaked at 1.3in.

Began near Dodd (36.5644, -89.1367).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1299878. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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