A strong, long-duration atmospheric river will bring excessive rainfall, flash flooding, and very strong winds to southwest Oregon and northwest California through Thursday. A High Risk (level 4 of 4) of Excessive Rainfall has been issued. A storm system over the northern Plains will produce locally heavy snow in North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota. 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
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
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.
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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. |
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