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The public record 1996 to today

Kentucky wind history

The public federal storm record holds 1,839 days with wind on record somewhere in Kentucky since 1996, 1,154 of them at 58 mph or more, across 55,781 reports. The strongest on record is 201 mph sustained on 12 September 1996 in TAYLOR County. 79 cities have wind on record within 10 miles of their centre, and each has a page that says what was searched, which storm days more than one source carried, and how far away the nearest instruments stood. The hail family has its own index: Kentucky hail history.

1,839

Days with wind on record, statewide

1,154

Days at 58 mph or more

201mph

Strongest measured, Sep 1996

79

Cities with wind on record nearby

Wind by city in Kentucky

Ranked by days with wind on record within 10 miles of each city's centre, then by population, each with its strongest figure: measured in the observed tone, an estimate in the estimated tone. Every place of five thousand people or more has a page; the busiest are listed here and the rest are a disclosure away.

  1. 01 Covington 328 days 100 mph
  2. 02 Fort Wright 327 days 100 mph
  3. 03 Fort Mitchell 326 days 100 mph
  4. 04 Taylor Mill 318 days 100 mph
  5. 05 Edgewood 315 days 100 mph
  6. 06 Villa Hills 312 days 100 mph
  7. 07 St. Matthews 306 days 104 mph
  8. 08 Newport 305 days 100 mph
  9. 09 Shively 298 days 104 mph
  10. 10 Louisville 296 days 104 mph
  11. 11 Erlanger 296 days 100 mph
  12. 12 Fort Thomas 286 days 100 mph
  13. 13 Dayton 286 days 100 mph
  14. 14 Bellevue 285 days 100 mph
  15. 15 Highland Heights 280 days 90 mph
  16. 16 Elsmere 278 days 100 mph
  17. 17 Cold Spring 268 days 90 mph
  18. 18 Florence 265 days 100 mph
  19. 19 Independence 263 days 100 mph
  20. 20 Lyndon 263 days 92 mph
  21. 21 Jeffersontown 259 days 104 mph
  22. 22 Alexandria 246 days 90 mph
  23. 23 Union 246 days 100 mph
  24. 24 Ashland 245 days 105 mph
  25. 25 Lexington-Fayette 237 days 96 mph
  26. 26 Paducah 233 days 100 mph
  27. 27 Douglass Hills 223 days 92 mph
  28. 28 Middletown 221 days 92 mph
  29. 29 Hillview 220 days 104 mph
  30. 30 Somerset 204 days 81 mph
Every place in Kentucky (79)

Wind days by year in Kentucky

Days with wind At 58 mph or more

The busiest year on record is 2006, with 82 days of wind, 58 of them at 58 mph or more.

Strongest wind recorded in Kentucky

Measured Estimated, not measured

Strongest wind recorded in Kentucky: date, wind speed, whether it was a gust or a sustained speed, evidence and where the report was taken.
Date Speed Reading Evidence County
12 Sep 1996 201 mph Sustained Ground observation TAYLOR
13 Jun 1997 201 mph Sustained Ground observation MADISON
14 May 2014 125 mph Gust Ground observation CHRISTIAN
14 May 2014 125 mph Sustained Ground observation Not stated
27 May 2004 120 mph Sustained Ground observation Not stated
27 May 2004 120 mph Gust Ground observation DAVIESS
20 Sep 2000 115 mph Sustained Ground observation MEADE
20 Sep 2000 115 mph Sustained Ground observation Not stated
The next step

Get the wind report for an address in Kentucky

The figures on this page are the record across Kentucky: enough to know there is something to cite, and from where. None of it says what reached one roof.

Run the address and the same archive is searched at the property: every wind report with its distance and bearing from the roof, the nearest station's readings, the analysis grid sampled at the address and labelled as analyzed, and the federal record each figure came from, in a document that states its own method. Ready in minutes.

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How this page is made

What counted
Every wind report in the archive filed under Kentucky by its source, with the cities ranked by the reports within 10 miles of each centre. A wind day is a calendar date with at least one report: four sources describing one storm are one afternoon of wind, not four. A report's figure is its gust where it has one and its sustained speed otherwise, and the tables say which.
Measured and estimated
A speed reported by a person or an instrument on the ground, whether read from an anemometer or judged by an observer from what the wind did, is filed as observed; a speed inferred from a grid or an analysis is an estimate and is marked as one. The two are never added together.
Severe
A day counts as severe when its strongest figure reached 58 mph, the National Weather Service criterion for a damaging gust. Weaker wind is still on the record, and still on this page.
Stations
A station reading is the wind at the instrument, not at any address, and is listed with the distance from the page's centre to the instrument. Readings are fetched for the ground around an address when a report is run and held afterwards, so the stations on a page are the ones within 30 miles that the archive holds readings from.
What this is not
Neighbouring places share reports, so counts are not exclusive. This page is the record around a place; it is not a report on any property, and it states no opinion about what reached one.
Terms used on this page
Peak gust, sustained wind, independent source: each term this page uses is defined in the glossary as the report prints it.
The record
Searched from 1996 to today. Compiled 2 November 2026 and rebuilt daily as the archive deepens. Records are reproduced as the federal sources published them. The coverage page states what the record holds, by kind and by year.

About this record

Everything here is reproduced from public federal and volunteer weather records, as the agencies and observer networks that publish them released it. Titan Weather compiles the record; it does not observe the weather, and it is not affiliated with any source it cites.

No archive holds everything. Storms cross places where nobody is standing, instruments and observers cover some areas better than others, sources revise their records, and recent reports can take weeks to arrive and settle. Coverage also thins as the years go back: an early quiet stretch may describe who was watching rather than what the weather did. Where this page shows nothing, nothing was found in the sources searched, within the period and area it states. That is not a finding that no weather occurred.

A record sits where its source filed it. Reports made from the ground are commonly logged against a town, a landmark or an offset from one rather than the spot where the measurement was taken, so any distance shown for one carries that source's own location error. Radar detections and warning geometry are instrument-located and do not.

These pages describe the public record near a place or on a date. They do not establish what reached any particular property, and nothing here is insurance, legal or engineering advice.