On this date fourteen years ago, April 16, 1998, the city of Bowling Green was devastated by a very potent supercell thunderstorm that produced baseball-size hail. The storm developed in Logan County, and very quickly produced a tornado that would track across southern Warren County, clip the northern tip of Allen County, cross Barren River Lake, and track the entire width of Barren County before dissipating. The tornado produced F3 damage at its peak intensity. The long track supercell then produced a brief F2 tornado in Metcalffe County, produced another F3 tornado that raked across northern Adair County, and then produced another brief F2 tornado at the end of the track of the F3 in Adair County.
The F3 tornado in Warren County hit rural areas of the county, thus allowing it to be mostly overshadowed by the tremendous hail damage in the city of Bowling Green, which experienced a direct impact from the hail core of this very intense supercell.
On that same day, Nashville’s central business district was directly impacted by an F3 wedge tornado as well. This outbreak of tornadoes came only a week after an outbreak of tornadoes impacted The Deep South, with suburbs of Birmingham, AL being hit by an F5 tornado. On Apirl 16, 1998, an F5 tornado occurred near Lawrenceburg, TN. It is known as “The Forgotten F5” because it was widely overlooked due to the impacts on Nashville as well as Bowling Green.
Today’s weather setup does not look to be as active as fourteen years ago. The decaying remnants of a very expansive squall line in association with a rather potent low pressure system that is tracking across the northern Great Lakes moved through the region this morning widely stabilizing the environment. The cold front should pass through the region by late afternoon into the early evening. While the majority of convective activity looks to occur in far eastern Ohio, much of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York with a small region of favorable conditions in the southern tip of Texas, which is currently verifying (the northern region should verify later today) as delineated by The SPC, some minor convective activity could be triggered in The Mid South and The Ohio Valley today by the passing cold front.
