EF3 Tornado — Madison, Kentucky

2009-05-08 · near Kirksville, Madison, Kentucky

Event narrative

The tornado first touched down in the Nina Ridge Road area three miles ESE of McCreary in Garrard County. The tornado caused EF-1 damage at this location before strengthening to EF-2 just before entering Madison County.

Near the intersection of Highways 1295 and 52 in Madison County, the tornado reached EF-3 intensity. Near this intersection, two adults were killed when the mobile home they were in was picked up and thrown by the tornado. The bodies were recovered from a nearby pond. Five other occupants of the mobile home, including three children, were injured. A female relative in a brick home just yards away from the mobile home received only minor injuries despite being pinned under a collapsed wall in the house.

The tornado weakened and lifted at times as it continued east across the county, but still caused significant damage. It tore much of the roof off a fire station on the south side of Richmond before moving over the Bluegrass Army Depot toward the community of Waco in the eastern part of the county. After doing extensive damage to mainly roofs in a subdivision of brick homes near Waco, the tornado destroyed a mobile home in the area, carrying two teenage male occupants of the home through the air before dropping them near an elementary school 300 yards away. The teens miraculously received only minor injuries. The tornado weakened significantly from this point on, doing only minor roof damage and downing trees as it continued eastward before lifting near the end of Drowning Creek Road.

The tornado was up to 150 yards wide with maximum estimated wind speeds up to 140 mph. Approximately 150 homes received damage, the most severe being several brick homes where only interior walls remained standing in the wake of the tornado.

Wider weather episode

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.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (37.6534, -84.4468)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 172960. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.