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EF1 tornado in Calloway County, Kentucky

Tornado January 22, 2012 · Calloway County, Kentucky

EF1
Rating
5.6 mi
Path length
100 yd
Path width
$50K
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 100 yards (0.06 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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

Peak winds were estimated near 95 mph. Hundreds of trees were uprooted or snapped. Windows were blown out of a house, and shingles were damaged. Shutters were ripped off the house. Three barns were destroyed. Two garages were levelled. A section of roof was peeled off another garage. The porch roof of a business in Hazel was destroyed. A large tree fell across a truck.

The wider storm

A potent upper-level trough moved east into eastern Kansas and Oklahoma, before assuming a negative tilt and accelerating east-northeast across the Mid-Mississippi and Lower Ohio Valleys. The associated surface low tracked northeast from Kansas across northern Missouri to southern Wisconsin. Ahead of the low and trough, a south-southwesterly low-level jet in excess of 50 knots expanded east across the Mid-Mississippi Valley. An expansive quasi-linear convective system formed along the lead cold front trailing southward from the surface low. Despite rather meager instability, very strong low and mid-level wind fields resulted in organized storm structures with pockets of damaging wind, isolated large hail, and a couple of tornadoes.

Began near Hazel (36.5000, -88.3200).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 356502. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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