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EF0 tornado in Caldwell County, Kentucky

Tornado January 11, 2020 · Caldwell County, Kentucky

EF0
Rating
20.5 mi
Whole path
175 yd
Path width
$360K
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Caldwell County → Caldwell County → Christian County → Christian County → Christian County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 175 yards (0.10 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

Hundreds of trees were snapped or uprooted. Where the tornado crossed State Route 91, one barn was destroyed and another was damaged. Elsewhere along the track, part of a barn roof was tossed across a road, and a house lost some siding. The tornado crossed into Christian County, where it intensified to EF-1.

The wider storm

An unseasonably strong storm system impacted the region January 10-11. Heavy rainfall, flooding, scattered damaging winds, tornadoes, and gusty non-thunderstorm winds impacted western Kentucky during this time. The bulk of the event occurred overnight and into the morning hours on the 11th. Rainfall totals ranged from 2 to 5 inches, which resulted in pockets of flash flooding across the region, as well as minor flooding of the Green River. Strong to severe convection over the Ozark Mountains moved east into an environment of very strong wind shear over southeast Missouri, with 850 mb winds near 60 knots. The convection maintained intensity after it crossed the Mississippi River during the early morning hours. Tremendous wind shear (winds of 50 knots down to 1500 feet above ground) and strong forcing associated with a potent 500 mb shortwave compensated for weak instability. Some of the strong winds aloft reached the surface in the form of gradient wind gusts from 40 to around 50 mph. A weak surface low formed along a cold front over southwest Arkansas, then deepened as it tracked northeast across the Missouri Bootheel and into the lower Ohio Valley on the morning of the 11th.

Began near Friendship (37.0500, -87.7800).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 866159. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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