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Kentucky: Risks & Trends

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Same standard as every other page on this site: every figure below is independently sourced, and figures that vary across sources, or measure genuinely different things, are flagged as such rather than collapsed into one number that looks more precise than the underlying data actually supports.

The Western Kentucky tornado (December 2021)

MetricFigure
Kentucky deaths 57
Kentucky injuries 515+
Peak rating EF4
Path length 165.7 mi
Maximum width 2,600 yd (~1.5 mi)
Peak winds 190 mph
Graves County (Mayfield) deaths 24
National ranking Deadliest tornado in Kentucky history; deadliest U.S. tornado during the month of December

A single tornado within a larger outbreak

This tornado was part of a broader outbreak that also struck Arkansas, Illinois, and Tennessee the same night, causing more than 90 deaths and $3.9 billion in damage across all affected states combined. The Kentucky-specific figures above cover the Western Kentucky tornado itself, not the full multi-state outbreak total.

The Eastern Kentucky floods (July 2022)

MetricFigure
Deaths 43-45 (rose over subsequent months as some victims later died from flood-related health complications)
Homes damaged or destroyed ~9,000
Damage estimate $450-950 million
Peak rainfall over a few days 14-16 in
Rainfall intensity at times 4+ in/hour
Helicopter rescues 600+
Counties declared federal disaster areas 13

The flooding was driven by “training” storms, slow-moving thunderstorm cells that repeatedly crossed the same ground rather than moving through quickly, concentrating extreme rainfall totals over a small area. Eastern Kentucky’s narrow hollows and steep terrain then turned that rainfall into fast-rising flash floods with very little warning time.

What these two have in common

Separated by seven months and hundreds of miles, the Western Kentucky tornado and the Eastern Kentucky floods demonstrate that severe weather risk in this state isn’t confined to one region or one season: a record-setting tornado struck in December, historically outside peak tornado season, and a historic flood struck a region not traditionally associated with the state’s most severe flooding.

Sources