Tornado damages 15 homes, multiple other structures in Alvaton

ALVATON, Ky. – At least 15 homes in the southern portion of Warren County sustained minor to significant damage following an EF-2 tornado touchdown Monday night.

Warren County Emergency Management officials were out surveying damage as of 12:09 p.m. Tuesday nearly 12 hours after they began, said Warren County Emergency Management Deputy Director Travis Puckett.

“We’ve done numerous damage assessments starting early this morning,” Puckett said. “We’re seeing anything from trees down to total devastation of barns.”

A horse trailer was picked up and moved 50-75 yards from where it originally sat.

There are no reports of injury or death to people or livestock following the storms, Puckett said.

“Several homes have minor to significant damage,” he said. “It’s all isolated to the southern part of the county near the Allen County line.”

At the height of the storm, about 4,500 Warren RECC members were without power. As of 12:30 p.m. Tuesday the utility provider was still working to restore power to seven customers, spokeswoman Kim Phelps said.

While storms rocked southern Warren County, the area was spared the devastation that hit Nashville and other parts of Tennessee where hundreds of structures were destroyed and multiple people died.

“In addition to difficult weather conditions locally, the tornado that swept through Nashville affected TVA assets that also serve Warren RECC,” Phelps said in a release.

The National Weather Service confirmed an EF-2 tornado touched down in Warren County in its preliminary report, Puckett said.

In determining if a storm was a tornado or simply straight-line winds, the National Weather Service looks at not only amount of debris but the pattern it is strewn in, for example, trees that have been twisted and pieces of insulation being blown in multiple directions suggest rotating winds that would be present in a tornado.

The latter is what John Gordon, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, says he saw Tuesday when he determined that the storm that hit Alvaton was  a tornado.

NOTE: This story has been changed from an earlier version in which the tornado classification was different.