Hail — Fulton, Georgia

2008-05-11 · near Fairburn, Fulton, Georgia

Event narrative

The College Park Police Department observed golf ball-sized hail. The Fulton County 911 Center relayed a report of quarter-sized hail from the Fairburn area. Hail fell for 10 to 15 minutes in the Fairburn area. Georgia Highway 92 was reported to have been covered with hail. The storm weakened as it moved northeast, but penny-sized hail was still observed by the public as it moved through the East Point area near Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Wider weather episode

A stationary front was draped across north Georgia early on May 10th with an active northwest flow aloft. Meanwhile...a vigorous short wave aloft was approaching the area from the southern plains. The stationary front provided the focus for two rounds of showers and thunderstorms, one early in the morning on the 10th and another in the afternoon. The activity tracked east-southeast with the upper flow aloft, mainly across north Georgia during the early morning and across central Georgia during the afternoon. An isolated strong supercell also tracked across the southern part of central Georgia during the evening. After a lull of convective activity for about four hours, intense multicell thunderstorms tracked into the area from Alabama after midnight and before dawn on the 11th. As these thunderstorms tracked across west central and central Georgia, 15 tornadoes were identified by subsequent surveys making this the most significant tornado outbreak to affect the area since the Katrina-associated tornadoes on August 29, 2005. Millions of dollars of property damage were reported as many homes were destroyed from these tornadoes from the western and southern suburbs of Atlanta southeastward across Macon, Dublin, and other counties in east central and southeast Georgia. Many of these counties were eligible for disaster assistance from the federal government.

In addition to the tornadoes and thunderstorm winds that caused extensive damage in dozens of counties across north and central Georgia during the early morning hours of May 11th, strong gradient winds developed on the back side of the strong cold front that moved through the area as low pressure intensified across the mid-Atlantic region. The strong winds combined with wet ground resulted in dozens of trees being blown down in some north Georgia counties. There were also two deaths as a result of downed trees in Barrow and Gwinnett county, all non-thunderstorm-related winds.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (33.5700, -84.5800)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 100265. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.