EF1 tornado in Hardin County, Kentucky

The estimated starting point for the tornado along this storm's track, per high resolution satellite imagery, was in a wooded area just west of Pierce Mill Road south of Garfield. Significant damage occurred to a home near Pierce Mill Road, where a portion of the roof was taken from the home above the garage and living space below. Mud splatter occurred to the front of the home at this location, and a wood plank was thrown backward into the roof above the living room. Several wood pieces were impaled into the ground at the property.

The tornado continued north northeast, causing damage in a forested area that opened up into Horn Cemetery. It then caused structural damage along Constantine Road. Downstream wooded areas showed evidence that the occluding tornado still caused damage before lifting southwest of Slaughter Road. At that point the rear flank downdraft surged ahead and caused damage along a swath just east of this track.

During the late evening and overnight hours March 15th into March 16th, a strong upper level trough and associated cold front moved across the Ohio Valley. Ahead of the cold front, temperatures were in the 70s with dew point temperatures in the upper 50s and low 60s. This corridor of modest low-level destabilization contained between 250 and 500 J/kg of MLCAPE which was oriented immediately ahead of the surface front and the main line of showers and thunderstorms. With a corridor of 80 knot mid-level winds approaching from the west, effective bulk shear was between 40 and 50 knots for this event, creating a typical high-shear, low-CAPE setup for central Kentucky and southern Indiana. While the primary forcing mechanism was lifting along the cold front, resulting in a quasi-linear convective system, some scattered cells developed ahead of the main line of storms across western Kentucky. These storms had transient supercellular characteristics, and would go on to produce a swath of stronger winds and a few embedded tornadoes across Butler, Grayson, Breckinridge, Hardin, and Meade County. Elsewhere across Kentucky, scattered wind damage was produced by the main line of storms, with more favorably oriented segments of the line producing additional weak spin-up tornadoes. As the line of storms pushed east toward the I-75 corridor early in the morning on March 16th, there was a general weakening trend as MLCAPE values dropped to only around 100 J/kg across the Bluegrass. However, the portion of the line across southern Kentucky had access to slightly greater instability, resulting in additional instances of wind damage and a spin-up tornado in Clinton County. The line of storms eventually pushed into eastern Kentucky by around 3 AM on March 16th, with much cooler air rushing into the region behind the cold front.