Late in the evening on May 16 and in the early hours of May 17, 2025, a tornado tore apart homes and businesses in southern Kentucky. At least 19 people died as a result.
In the wake of the disaster, posts on Facebook, TikTok (archived) and X blamed U.S. President Donald Trump's administration for the deaths. According to the posts, the administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, championed by tech billionaire Elon Musk, cut the area's tornado warning systems as part of cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS).
That's not true — the NWS did issue tornado warnings for the area in the hours leading up to the devastation. Screenshots published in the Lexington Herald-Leader showed that residents did receive warning texts on their phones in advance of the tornado hitting. Additionally, there was no evidence that tornado sirens in the area had been deactivated by the Trump administration's budget cuts — if there was, the people affected by the storm certainly would have noted that fact in interviews.
But it is true that the DOGE cuts left the NWS on weaker footing — a different Lexington Herald-Leader story revealed that all three NWS offices in Kentucky were short-staffed, and The New York Times reported that the Jackson, Kentucky, office in charge of issuing alerts for the area most heavily hit by the May 16-17 storm, was one of at least four NWS offices without a permanent, overnight forecaster because of the cuts. As a result, staffers from nearby offices helped the Jackson NWS staff cover and forecast the May 16-17 storm, according to the Herald-Leader.
Forecasters do a lot of work behind the scenes to make sure the public is informed of weather emergencies. For tornadoes, the first step of that process happens right in the middle of what's known as "tornado alley" — Norman, Oklahoma, home to the Storm Prediction Center (SPC). Meteorologists at the SPC are responsible for watching the weather patterns and predicting which areas of the country could see thunderstorms and tornadoes in the coming days.
Each day, they attempt to predict how likely an area is to be hit by a severe thunderstorm. This risk map is updated multiple times a day, and more distant forecasts (for two and three days out) are released twice a day. Here's what the SPC predicted for the region in the days preceding the outbreak:
- On May 14, forecasters predicted that southern Illinois, southern Indiana and northern Kentucky would face an "enhanced risk" (3/5 levels) of severe thunderstorms on May 16-17.
- On May 15, the forecast for southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois, southern Indiana and western Kentucky placed the area at "moderate risk" (4/5 levels) for severe thunderstorms on that date.
- On May 16, the forecast stayed the same, so the SPC issued a "Public Severe Weather Outlook" for the region, warning of "Widespread damaging winds, some hurricane force
; Several tornadoes, a few intense; Widespread large hail, some baseball size." This would have been relayed to local TV and radio stations, posted on the requisite NWS office's X page, and would appear on smartphone weather apps.
The SPC also attempts to predict tornadoes closer to the day of a big storm. If the conditions are right, they issue a "tornado watch" over a relatively wide area. This designation does not mean there's a tornado on the ground — it just means residents should be prepared just in case.
On May 16, the storm that produced the central Kentucky tornado barreled across eastern Missouri and dropped several damaging tornadoes. At 7:16 p.m. EST, the SPC issued a tornado watch for eastern Kentucky, among other places.
The next level of weather alert is a "tornado warning," issued by local weather offices when they learn there's a tornado on the ground. Warnings are significantly more pointed, focusing on a small area that should fall within the tornado's path. They inform residents to take shelter immediately — the NWS website describes a warning as posing "imminent danger to life and property."
At 10:30 p.m. EST on May 16, the Jackson, Kentucky, weather office posted its first tornado warning for the area including Somerset, Ferguson and Burnside, Kentucky. Like a tornado watch, warnings are shared with TV and radio stations, posted on the NWS office's X page and appear on smartphone weather apps. In addition, they also trigger the emergency broadcast system and can activate tornado sirens.
The warning initially lasted until 11:15 p.m. Over the next three hours, the time frame of the tornado warning was extended — to 11:45 p.m., then to midnight, then to 12:30, then to 1 a.m., and its boundaries shifted eastward ahead of the deadly storm. The last tornado warning published by the Jackson NWS office that night was an update at 12:43 a.m., noting that the tornado warning for the easternmost cities in the affected region would end at 1 a.m.
At 11:08 p.m., forecasters also added an additional piece of information to all the future warnings — the tornado was considered a "life threatening situation," a variation of the "particularly dangerous situation" (PDS) term applied for tornadoes that could be particularly damaging. As with all prior information, this upgrade would have been communicated with local TV and radio, appeared on social media channels and smartphone weather apps, and through the emergency broadcast system.
According to a post from a Lexington meteorologist on X, the potentially dangerous situation warning came as the tornado "produced significant damage in Somerset."