Severe Weather and Heavy Rainfall in the Ohio Valley; Heat Continuing in the South and Southeast

Severe thunderstorms with damaging wind gusts will be possible from the mid-Mississippi Valley into parts of the Ohio Valley and central Appalachians tonight. Heavy rain associated with these storms may lead to considerable flash and urban flooding impacts across portions of the Ohio Valley. Mid-summer heat persists from the Central Plains to the Southeast. Read More >

Overview

The remnants of Tropical Storm Olga packed quite the punch across parts of the Ohio Valley on October 26, 2019. A narrow corridor of damaging winds, associated with the core of that system, caused damage and power outages from near Hopkinsville, KY north to Owensboro, KY and Ferdinand, IN. Rainfall ahead of the system helped continue the improvement on the flash drought from September.

Wind
Radar
Storm Reports
Rainfall
Storm History
Environment

Wind

Gusty winds affected the region as the surface low pressure associated with the remnants of Tropical Storm Olga crossed the region. The highest wind gusts were immediately behind a line of showers that traveled from near Hopkinsville to Owensboro and then into southern Indiana. The radar image below, from the KHPX radar near Hopkinsville, KY, shows a core of stronger winds...peaking at 116 mph from the radar's perspective...approaching the border of Kentucky.

Those stronger winds did not mix all the way down to the surface...fortunately! However, peak gusts likely in the 60-80 mph range did cause quite a bit of damage along that core as it continued travelling into Kentucky. Damage reports coming in from Tennessee helped the Paducah NWS office issue warnings for Todd and Christian counties. Actual observations on the ground, thanks to the Kentucky Mesonet, of 63 mph at the Todd County site and 54 mph at the Christian County site, helped NWS Louisville pull the trigger on a downstream warning for western Logan, Butler, and southern Ohio counties.

Peak wind gusts from Saturday are shown in the map below.

Radar

Radar data unavailable

Radar Loop

Storm Reports

At one point, just after the strongest winds exited the region there Kentucky EM office calculated that over 20,000 customers had lost power. The map below shows the location of several wind and flooding reports.

The text data below are storm reports we collected at NWS Louisville.

PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LOUISVILLE KY

..TIME...   ...EVENT...      ...CITY LOCATION...     ...LAT.LON...
..DATE...   ....MAG....      ..COUNTY LOCATION..ST.. ...SOURCE....
            ..REMARKS..

0429 PM     TSTM WND DMG     2 WNW DOT               36.70N 86.98W
10/26/2019                   LOGAN              KY   911 CALL CENTER  

            AREA OF STRONG WIND BEHIND THE LINE OF 
            HEAVIEST CONVECTION. DISPATCH REPORTED 9 
            TREES WERE REPORTED DOWN. THE TREES FELL IN 
            THE SOUTHERN AND NORTHERN END OF THE COUNTY.


0505 PM     TSTM WND DMG     3 NW DUNDEE             37.58N 86.82W
10/26/2019                   OHIO               KY   EMERGENCY MNGR   

            TREES WERE DOWN AROUND THE COUNTY. NO OTHER 
            DETAILS WERE GIVEN BY THE EMERGENCY MANAGER 
            OR DISPATCH.

0500 PM     TSTM WND GST     2 ENE HARTFORD          37.46N 86.86W
10/26/2019  M55 MPH          OHIO               KY   MESONET          

            MESONET STATION HTFD HARTFORD 3 E.


0523 PM     TSTM WND DMG     3 WSW LEWISPORT         37.92N 86.95W
10/26/2019                   HANCOCK            KY   EMERGENCY MNGR   

            TREE DOWN ON STATE ROAD 334 BETWEEN 
            LEWISPORT AND THE COUNTY LINE AND ADDITIONAL 
            GENERAL WIND DAMAGE IN LEWISPORT.


0524 PM     TSTM WND DMG     LEWISPORT               37.94N 86.90W
10/26/2019                   HANCOCK            KY   EMERGENCY MNGR   

            POWER LINES AND TREES DOWN ON PELL STREET IN 
            LEWISPORT.


0538 PM     TSTM WND DMG     1 N FERDINAND           38.24N 86.86W
10/26/2019                   DUBOIS             IN   EMERGENCY MNGR   

            THERE IS A TREE ON THE ROADWAY AT 23RD 
            STREET AND MAIN STREET IN FERDINAND.

0540 PM     TSTM WND GST     2 N JOHNSBURG           38.25N 86.95W
10/26/2019  M56 MPH          DUBOIS             IN   AWOS


0544 PM     TSTM WND GST     IRELAND                 38.41N 87.00W
10/26/2019  M53 MPH          DUBOIS             IN   AMATEUR RADIO

0545 PM     TSTM WND DMG     2 E JASPER              38.39N 86.89W
10/26/2019                   DUBOIS             IN   EMERGENCY MNGR   

            A TREE IS ACROSS POWER LINES NEAR 
            JAPSER-DUBOIS ROAD AND STATE ROAD 164.

0602 PM     TSTM WND DMG     PAOLI                   38.56N 86.47W
10/26/2019                   ORANGE             IN   EMERGENCY MNGR   

            MULTIPLE TREES ACROSS THE COUNTY WERE 
            BROUGHT DOWN DUE TO HIGH WINDS, BUT POWER 
            AND PROPERTY WERE NOT AFFECTED.

Rain Reports


Figure 1: 2-day rainfall totals from a collection of reports from multiple sources for the state of Kentucky.	Figure 2: 2-day rainfall totals from a collection of reports from multiple sources for the NWS Louisville forecast area.	Figure 3: 2-day rainfall totals from a collection of reports from multiple sources focusing on the Louisville Metro area.

Below is the Kentucky Mesonet 48-hour rainfall totals from this event.

Storm History

The National Hurricane Center issued its last advisory on Olga at 11 PM EDT Friday night. In it, they forecast the remnants of Olga to cross into western Kentucky Saturday in the late afternoon hours.

Environment

Insert synoptic summary.


Figure 1: 2-hour pressure change showing strong drops (blue dashed lines) over southern Illinois and western Kentucky. Black contours represent the surface pressure fields.	Figure 2: Surface temperature (red contours) and dewpoints (blue dashed contours) showing plenty of heating and moisture just east of the surface low center (black contours).	Figure 3: 850 mb data (about 4,000 feet above ground level). The key figure here is the large swath of strong winds aloft (up to 95 mph) east of the circulation center.