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EF0 tornado in Calloway County, Kentucky

Tornado December 21, 2013 · Calloway County, Kentucky

EF0
Rating
0.3 mi
Path length
50 yd
Path width
$2K
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 50 yards (0.03 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 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

A relatively weak tornado touched down 2 miles west of Dexter in northern Calloway County. The tornado uprooted a couple of trees and downed power lines during its brief touchdown.

The wider storm

A surface low pressure system deepened as it moved northeast across western Tennessee, reaching the Lower Ohio Valley in the evening. A strong, negatively tilted shortwave at 500 mb ejected northeast from the southern Plains, providing strong forcing for ascent. A squall line organized near the Mississippi River and then surged east-northeast in association with the strengthening surface low. Unseasonably warm and moist air advanced across western Kentucky and southwest Indiana ahead of the squall line. Though instability was weak, it was based near the ground. Very strong low-level wind shear supported embedded circulations within the squall line. These resulted in pockets of very damaging winds and an isolated tornado.

Began near Wadesboro (36.7343, -88.3178).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 483158. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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