EF4 Tornado — Bryan, Georgia

2022-04-05 · near Reka, Bryan, Georgia

Event narrative

A National Weather Service Storm Survey Team confirmed an EF-4 tornado with estimated maximum wind speed of 185 mph in Bryan County Georgia. The violent tornado began just west of the Bryan County Courthouse in Pembroke, where it damaged part of the roof, blew out some windows, and snapped numerous trees. The tornado continued along a northeast path across a wooded, marshy area, including C C Road, Stubbs Farm Road, and Stubby Road. In this area, the tornado produced significant tree damage, and heavily damaged a residence on Stubbs Farm Road. The tornado then continued east-northeast moving through Hendrix Park, Park Place subdivision, and Black Creek Golf Course, where it reached a maximum width of 3/4 of a mile and peak EF-4 intensity. Across this area, the tornado extensively damaged most homes, structures and trees. Some homes and structures were completely destroyed. Several injuries, some serious, occurred in this area as well. The tornado then continued east-northeast over wooded and marshy areas, across Olive Branch Road and across the southern end of Homestead Drive. Several mobile homes were completely destroyed in this area, causing additional injuries and tragically claiming the life of an adult female. The tornado began to weaken as it moved toward the interchange of I-16 and U.S. Highway 280. In this area, there was some minor roof damage to a large industrial building off of Oracal Parkway Circle, as well as some snapping and uprooting of trees. The tornado finally dissipated in a marshy region just east of Oracal Parkway Circle.

Wider weather episode

A severe quasi-linear convective system (QLCS) moved through southeast Georgia during the afternoon into early evening hours of April 5, 2022 as a mid-level shortwave ejected rapidly across the region in advance of a surface cold front. The environment ahead of the QLCS was favorable for severe local storms as southerly winds spread mid 60 dewpoint temperatures into a warm sector across the Southeast United States and favorable mid-level lapse rates and lifted index values helped produce mixed layer convective available potential energy (MLCAPE) as high as 1500-2000 J/kg during peak surface heating across southeast Georgia. Within the warm sector, strong shear associated with 50-70 knot low and mid-level jets beneath the left front quadrant of a 120 knot upper-level jet, 0-6 km bulk shear around 50 knots, and 0-3 km storm relative helicity in excess of 300 m2/s2 were supportive of well organized convection and potentially embedded supercell thunderstorms in a QLCS capable of producing a prolonged path of damaging winds and strong long-track tornadoes. As the QLCS swept through southeast Georgia, a few discrete supercell thunderstorms became exceptionally strong near or just ahead of the main line of thunderstorms, producing damaging winds, large hail, and a violent EF-4 tornado near Pembroke, GA that took 1 life and injured 12 others along an approximately 14.5 mile path.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.1202, -81.6561)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1014520. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.