EF2 tornado in McCracken County, Kentucky

The tornado began very close to the Ballard County line. The most intense damage in McCracken County was rated EF-2 at a uranium enrichment plant just west of Grahamville. At that location, three metal roll-up doors on the main processing building were blown in. Some wall panels on the large processing building were blown out. The tops of three steel power transmission towers within the plant grounds were bent over. A few power lines were snapped. Cooling tower shrouds were blown off. Some siding on a cooling tower was damaged. One sport utility vehicle was shoved 30 yards into a ditch. An off-duty employee of the plant was seriously injured when tornado debris, including another car, was blown into his vehicle. Elsewhere in the county, an abandoned mobile home was demolished, though the undercarriage remained. Many houses had damage to shingles and siding. Some metal roofs were slightly damaged. A wooden fence was ripped from the ground. Chain link fences were blown over. Trees were uprooted or snapped off, some striking homes. A church foyer was destroyed. Road signs were bent. The average path width was 100 yards in McCracken County. The tornado continued east across the Ohio River into Massac County, Illinois, where it strengthened to EF-3 intensity. 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.