15th Anniversary of the Owensboro F3 Tornado

Owensboro F3 Tornado: Fifteen years ago today, at approximately 4:10pm, an F3 tornado struck the city of Owensboro, KY.  The tornado damaged a large number of structures, which left many people suffering from injuries as well.

Around a dozen of the structures damaged were actually on the campus of Kentucky Wesleyan College.  The following was taken from KWC’s website, which details the event from their perspective:

An F3 tornado roared through the campus on January 3rd, 2000.  True to the Wesleyan spirit, the campus community worked together in the recovery effort to renovate and add buildings following the devastation.  New facilities included Winchester Center, Yu Hak Hahn Center for the Sciences, President’s Home and Steele Stadium. The fourth floor of the Barnard-Jones Administration Building became the Center for Business Studies and Massie Hall underwent renovations.

The National Weather Service in Paducah has a great overview of this weather occurrence available on their website.  The following is a snippet taken from their piece:

Owensboro, Kentucky sustained the most severe damage and the greatest number of injuries. Revised damage figures now show about 100 homes were destroyed, another 700 received major damage, and a total of roughly 2,000 homes received at least minor damage. About 18 persons were injured. The most seriously injured person received broken vertebrae and multiple lacerations.

Owensboro wasn’t the only place hit by a tornado that day.  A separate F3 twister impacted Crittenden & Webster counties, also causing structure damage and sustained injuries.  The total damage costs from this eventful day was estimated at $70,000,000!

Given the magnitude of these tornadoes, it was quite surprising no one lost their life.  Be sure to check out the piece from NWS Paducah for more photos and detailed information of this event.