Thunderstorm Wind in Henry County, Kentucky

Trees were blown down onto River Road near Lockport.

During the afternoon and early evening hours on May 16th, a Mesoscale Convective Vortex moved from west-southwest to east-northeast across the lower Ohio Valley, providing forcing for scattered showers and thunderstorms to develop. Thunderstorms were able to feed off of a seasonably high amount of instability, with around 2000 J/kg Mixed-Layer CAPE present in the pre-storm environment. While synoptic scale ridging over the southeast US meant that large scale flow was fairly weak, the MCV provided a mesoscale enhancement to the wind shear profile, with around 30-35 knots of effective shear supporting organized multicell clusters. Scattered strong to severe storms moved along the Ohio River in north central Kentucky, producing several reports of wind damage as well as isolated instances of near-severe sized hail. The most robust storm of the evening produced a 65 mph wind gust as it moved across Oldham and Henry County.