EF2 tornado in Livingston County, Kentucky

The tornado moved across the Ohio River from Pope County, Illinois into Livingston County, Kentucky. The tornado passed just south of Smithland. The most intense damage in Livingston County was rated EF-2 with estimated 125 mph peak winds. Several mobile homes were destroyed. Thousands of trees were snapped or uprooted as the tornado passed mainly through forested hilly terrain. The black tornado funnel was videotaped as it moved across parts of the county. The tornado continued east into Lyon County, Kentucky. The total path length of this tornado was 42 miles. The parent supercell tracked from southeast Missouri across the Mississippi River through the Paducah area, then east to the Kentucky Lake area of western Kentucky.

Clusters of supercell thunderstorms moved rapidly east around 50 knots across western Kentucky during the afternoon. Some of these storms produced tornadoes. Low level wind shear was very strong, with 0 to 1 km bulk shear near 50 knots. This shear was present amidst decent instability for late fall, with mixed-layer capes of 500 to 1000 j/kg. One supercell cluster moved east from the Paducah area along the Western Kentucky Parkway. The other supercell cluster moved east across the far northwest counties of Kentucky, passing south of Evansville and then across the Owensboro area. The storms initiated over Missouri along a pre-frontal low pressure trough, then moved east across the Lower Ohio Valley. Strong southerly surface winds ahead of the storms gusted up to 50 mph during the early morning hours. An off-duty meteorologist measured a gust to 50 mph in Calvert City in Marshall County.