Tornadoes cause damage, shock in Parkland neighborhood

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – The National Weather Service confirmed that tornadoes struck Louisville and Harrison County, Indiana, during Thursday’s series of storms.

Ida Grace and her family waited out the storms before leaving to celebrate Independence Day.

“It happened so fast,” she said. “It sounded like a big whistling noise.”

They’ve lived in the Parkland neighborhood for two years and have seen their share of storms. This one was different.

“We’ve had a lot of wind damage before, but this tree was pretty resilient,” Ida said, pointing to the uprooted tree in her yard. “It was a tornado.”

An EF-1 tornado with winds of 95 miles per hour struck between 28th Street and Woodland Avenue between Catalpa and Cypress streets in the Parkland neighborhood Thursday afternoon, the NWS said.

The roads were covered with fallen trees for block after block. The storm even ripped part of the roof off the Shiloh Baptist Church.

Some of the worst damage was spread across the 1300 block of Olive Street, where Theo Kenemore lived his entire life.

“This doesn’t usually happen in this area,” he said. “So when it happened, everyone was shocked.”

This is only the second known tornado in Jefferson County in July. The only other known tornado occurred on July 27, 1997, southeast of Jeffersontown.

A second tornado struck Harrison County with an estimated path extending one mile beginning on IN-135 between Sky Air Road and the IN-335 intersection and ending on Tee Road north of Corydon.

This tornado was EF-0 with peak winds of 80 miles per hour.

No injuries were reported.

“I mean it could have gone a whole different way,” Ida said. “I’m grateful it didn’t.”