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EF0 tornado in Metcalfe County, Kentucky

Tornado May 8, 2009 · Metcalfe County, Kentucky

EF0

Rating

5.8 mi

Whole path

30 yd

Path width

$50K

Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Barren County → Metcalfe County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

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 EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 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

This tornado first touched down in Barren County, about one mile northeast of Hiseville, before tracking into Metcalfe County. While the tornado produced EF-1 damage in Barren County, only EF-0 damage occurred along the Metcalfe part of its path, uplifting a pole barn and scattering it across a field. The tornado then lifted about one mile south of Center near State Highway 1243.

The wider storm

A long-lived bow echo that had produced widespread wind damage over southern Illinois moved east into Kentucky during the late morning hours. As it moved east, the system encountered a strengthening low-level jet across the Ohio Valley, which helped modify the motion of the line, resulting in training storms of extremely heavy rain that caused flash flooding. Individual storms developing ahead of the line continued to produce damaging winds, with two storms producing tornadoes, before the main area of convection moved through.

NWS damage surveys determined the tornado in south-central Kentucky to be EF-1 in intensity, while the east-central Kentucky was ranked as a strong EF-3. The EF-3 tornado resulted in two fatalities and numerous injuries.

Began near Savoyard (37.1123, -85.7734).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

1 more tornado the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

EF3 Madison County 2 dead

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 172959. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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