TornadoLookup

Home / Kentucky / Christian

EF2 tornado in Christian County, Kentucky

Tornado April 4, 2011 · Christian County, Kentucky

EF2
Rating
5.3 mi
Path length
200 yd
Path width
7
Injuries
$2.0M
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 200 yards (0.11 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF2 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF2 is considerable damage: roofs torn off well-built houses, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, consistent with estimated gusts of 111–135 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

The tornado path began along U.S. Highway 41 at a large auto parts manufacturing plant. The industrial warehouse type building was heavily damaged on the north and west sides. Large sections of roof up to 100 by 400 feet were removed. Small sections of exterior walls were peeled back or blown in. A rooftop hvac unit was blown off the building. There were seven injuries to workers inside the plant, mostly due to flying objects. One worker required overnight hospitalization. Some of the injuries included a broken jaw and broken foot. In front of the industrial building on U.S. 41, steel utility poles were bent almost to the ground. The remainder of the path was mostly through open farm country. Several barns were destroyed, and metal roofs were off two homes. Dozens of trees were uprooted. Observers at Fort Campbell reported seeing a rotating wall cloud about the time of the tornado. Peak winds were estimated near 130 mph. The average path width was 150 yards.

The wider storm

Thunderstorms gradually intensified along and ahead of a cold front from Arkansas into western Kentucky. The storms occurred in a moist and strongly sheared environment, resulting in a combination of line segments and supercells which evolved into a quasi-linear convective system. There were isolated tornadoes, along with a couple small swaths of damaging winds.

Began near Hopkinsville (36.7835, -87.3969).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

4 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 288319. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

Tornadoes near your address

See every tornado that passed near a place you know, measured to its path.