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EF1 tornado in Calloway County, Kentucky

Tornado March 9, 2017 · Calloway County, Kentucky

EF1
Rating
5.6 mi
Path length
150 yd
Path width
$75K
Damage as recorded
EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 150 yards (0.09 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. The path began in the southwest part of Murray and followed Highway 121 to about four miles southeast of Murray. Dugout roofs at the city high school ballfield in Murray were blown across the street into a home and car. Numerous very large trees were snapped and uprooted. About three miles outside the city limits of Murray, barns and outbuildings were heavily damaged. Most of the path was high-end EF-0 strength. Near the end of the path, the tornado intensified to EF-1. This is the area where a large section of roof and some trusses were blown off a well-built metal barn, and plastic projectiles were hurled through a garage wall. A building was destroyed by uprooted trees that fell on top of it.

The wider storm

An outbreak of severe thunderstorms occurred over the Tennessee border counties. Thunderstorms rapidly developed across western Kentucky ahead of a line of thunderstorms over the Missouri Bootheel region. These initial storms formed along a southwesterly low-level jet and its associated moisture plume. Large hail was the primary severe weather hazard in this leading activity, which was elevated above the surface. Later in the evening, a surface-based bowing line of thunderstorms exited southeast Missouri and then crossed southwest Kentucky. This bowing line was associated with an embedded supercell that spawned a few tornadoes. The storms developed along and just ahead of a cold front as it pressed southward into the Lower Ohio Valley and extreme southeast Missouri.

Began near Murray (36.5996, -88.3322).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

2 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 683911. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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