Lightning — Jefferson, Kentucky

2012-07-19 · near Audubon Park, Jefferson, Kentucky

Event narrative

Lightning struck a house on the 3900th block on third street. It started a fire in the basement that eventually consumed the house. Two people did not make it out of the house and died.

Wider weather episode

During the early morning hours on July 19th, a convective system moved southeast across southern Ohio and eastern Kentucky. This left behind an outflow boundary that extended from near Madison, Indiana southeast through the Kentucky Bluegrass. A couple of strong storms developed by mid afternoon along this boundary and brought isolated wind damage to the Bluegrass Region. Later that afternoon, scattered severe storms developed under highly unstable conditions across southern Indiana, aided by the approach of a southward moving upper level disturbance. As these storms crossed the Ohio River, they grew upscale into several bowing segments. By evening, two of these segments merged south of Louisville into a squall line that brought widespread damaging winds to much of central Kentucky. Most locations experienced a strong gust front with at least 45 mph winds. Several Kentucky mesonet sites measured winds in excess of 58 mph.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (38.1980, -85.7646)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 384229. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.