The National Weather Service in Paducah confirmed in a social media post Wednesday that the Memorial Day weekend’s tornado outbreak caused record-breaking damage in communities across four states, including Kentucky.
Of the 16 twisters that touched down in the quad state NWS coverage area that weekend, more than half were in Kentucky.
In total, the May 24 storms left more than 250 miles of tornado tracks on the ground in the Paducah office coverage region, breaking the previous single-day record by nearly 100 miles. That’s including the December 2021 outbreak.
The most powerful of the tornadoes was an EF-3 that left a trail of damage across Lyon, Bardwell, and Hopkins counties.
An EF-2 tornado was also confirmed to have touched down in Trigg and Christian counties, and various EF-1 tornadoes touched parts of Graves and Calloway.
Clean up efforts are still underway for many of the impacted communities.