Apr. 2—Severe weather shelters are preparing to service Madison county ahead of the potential for severe weather across the county and the greater Bluegrass region.

Madison County’s EMA Director Tim Gray said today is one of the days to watch the sky, have wireless emergency alerts activated on your phone and be weather aware.

“We’re staying in check with the National Weather Service, keeping an eye on them and what their recommendations are,” Gray said. “We reached out yesterday to community partners about opening some shelters if we needed those.”

The severe weather shelters opening are Madison County Public Library’s Berea branch, Tate’s Creek Baptist Church, along with Red Lick and Kirksville Volunteer Fire Departments.

Now, these are NOT certified shelters but places that offer better refuge than mobile homes, cars or houses lacking basements.

The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center (SPC) in Norman, OK gives the Bluegrass region, including all of Madison county the second highest risk (moderate risk) of seeing damaging winds, hail and possibly tornadoes.

Richmond, Berea and the rest of Madison county, along with the Lexington metro, Louisville metro and Frankfort area carry a 15-29% hatched risk, with power outages and damage already being reported due a line of severe storms that blew through earlier today. That 15-29% ‘hatched’ zone stretches into Ohio up towards Columbus.

‘Hatched’ risk is defined as the potential for strong, long track tornadoes of EF2 or greater, according to the SPC.

The wind risk is much higher throughout the region with a 30-44% ‘hatched’ risk of winds. ‘hatched’ in this sense means there is a greater than 10% probability of winds being above 75 mph.

Several thousand in Fayette county woke up to no power due a line of storms that had produced a tornado in Eastern Kentucky near Ashland.