Kentucky Tornadoes July 4 weekend

A series of tornadoes roared through the east central to the western parts of the state of Kentucky on the weekend of July 4, 2018. A strong cold front moving out of the Canadian Rockies collided with a heatwave which had been stalled over the eastern US for two weeks. The collision of fronts caused an outbreak of severe thunderstorms and some tornadoes over Iowa, Illinois, and northern Missouri on July 5-6. These storms caused minor damage but worse destruction over parts of Kentucky. The first tornado to hit the state was an F2 at Fultonville, just across the Ohio River from Shawneetown, Illinois,on Friday afternoon July 7. wrecking a dairy farm and killing several head of cattle. Another tornado, an F3, came roaring out of Indiana towards the town of Brandenburg, which had seen F5 damage from a twister on April 3, 1974.This occurred on Friday evening at 6pm EST. Fortunately this storm rolled out of the area towards Louisville, where it slammed into a trailer park on the west side of the city. Twelve people were injured and taken to hospitals but no one was killed. The next storm rolled through the Lexington-Fayette area that same evening at 8pm, taking the roof off of a large church which was holding a patriotic celebration. Two people were killed and twenty four injured by this terrible F4, which went on to blow several cars off I-75 into ditches. Another F2 touched down near Winchester and an F0 was reported at Richmond, but the worse was yet to come. As Saturday dawned. Kentuckians thought that the danger had passed, but late in the morning proved otherwise. At 12:35 pm, a super cell developed over Fleming County, passing over the county seat of Flemingsburg headed in a northeasterly direction. straight for neighboring Lewis County. Double vortex funnels developed into an F5 tornado headed directly for the county seat of Vanceburg!! Two area meterologists, Cynthia Tanner of Cincinnati's WKRC-TV and Heidi Brachmann of Huntington, WV station WOWK-TV, saw the storm on Doppler radar and took to the air to warn the residents of this small Ohio River town. The Emergency Broadcast System was also alerted and tornado sirens went off as the large funnel approached Vanceburg. But seconds before it entered the town, the large funnel lifted as it ran out of steam. A gas station(which was closed for the holiday weekend) was destroyed and the second story swept from a house built in 1875, but downtown was spared damage with nobody killed!! Several residents were taken to Ashland, KY and Portsmouth, OH hospitals with injuries as thunderstorms passed east through West Virginia and Virginia. Virginia sustained the last damage of the outbreak as minor flooding from a cloudburst on the Maury River in Rockbridge County.