Tornado that hit Pulaski, Laurel counties ruled EF-4. More severe weather approaches
As Kentucky braced for the possibility of more severe weather Tuesday night, the National Weather Service said the tornado that hit Pulaski and Laurel counties late Friday was an EF-4, with winds of 170 miles per hour.
The tornado cut a path 55.6 miles long, with a maximum width of 1,700 yards, or about a mile, the National Weather Service said Tuesday.
The weather service had previously said its preliminary surveys indicated the tornado Friday was likely a high-end EF-3, which has 3-second wind gusts of up to 165 mph and is one level lower than an EF-4 on the Enhanced Fujita scale. The scale measures the wind speed of a tornado based on the damage it leaves behind, from EF-0, the weakest, to EF-5, the strongest.
An EF-4 tornado has three-second wind gusts of 166 to 200 mph.
The Friday night storms left 19 Kentuckians dead, and as of Tuesday morning, eight people who were hurt in London remained hospitalized, Gov. Andy Beshear said.
Neighborhoods in Laurel County that were hit by the tornado were under a mandatory evacuation order for Tuesday night, as the area prepared for more storms and the possibility of strong winds that could turn debris from the previous storms into dangerous projectiles.
By just after 10 p.m., WKYT Chief Meteorologist Chris Bailey said on-air that while there were still severe thunderstorm warnings out for Eastern Kentucky, the system was beginning to lose power.
“We’re starting to see this calming down tremendously,” he said.
Bailey said “this is more of a straight line and damaging wind event” than what the state experienced Friday.
There were some scattered reports of downed trees and power outages in the wake of the storms.
More than 16,000 Kentucky customers without power, most of whom were in the southern part of the state, as of just before 10:30 p.m., according to PowerOutage.us.
Tornado warnings were issued late Tuesday afternoon in a number of Western Kentucky counties, including Calloway, Marshall, Lyon, Caldwell and Graves, as the storms moved eastward. Those warnings expired before 6 p.m., but new warnings were issued near the Kentucky-Tennessee line soon afterward.
A swath of the western part of the state was under a tornado watch until 11 p.m. The National Weather Service in Louisville said the storms were bringing the possibility of scattered hail up to tennis ball size, wind gusts of up to 70 mph and the chance of a few tornadoes.
Part of southern Kentucky, including London and Somerset, and part of southeastern Kentucky was under a tornado watch until 2 a.m.
Central Kentucky and Louisville were not included in the tornado watches.
Pete Geogerian, of the National Weather Service in Jackson, said the storms were expected to reach the area previously hit by Friday’s tornado between 7 p.m. and midnight.
While he said the setup from these storms does not look as severe as Friday’s, Geogerian said “we’re not out of the woods yet.”
He said the winds coming Tuesday are “more moderate,” and any tornado activity would likely be “more short-lived.”
Georgerian said Friday night’s tornado was the deadliest the Jackson office has had in its region since the National Weather Service opened the office in 1981.
He said the last time Laurel County had a fatality from a tornado was 2012, and the last fatality from a tornado in Pulaski County was during the “super tornado” outbreak of April 3, 1974.
This story was originally published May 20, 2025 at 6:32 PM.
