EF1 tornado in Wayne County, Mississippi

A 100 mph EF1 tornado tracked through northwestern Waynesboro on

March 30th, 2022 at 8:47 PM CDT. The tornado began on Pine Oak

Land Road as an EF0 where it uprooted several softwood trees. The

tornado continued northeast with a fairly discontinuous path until

it reached Glitter Lane. It was here that the tornado intensified

at the intersection of Glitter Lane and Joiner Street where

multiple softwood trees were snapped. It reached Aaron Drive

shortly after continuing to snap softwood trees and causing minor

roof damage. The tornado then turned more northeasterly from here

crossing Mill Street and uprooted multiple softwood trees. Once the

tornado reached Mississippi Drive it came across a small car wash

which had a partial canopy collapse of its eastern supporting

cinder block wall due to the strong wind load. Here it likely

produced its strongest winds near 100mph. The tornado began to

weaken and damage became intermittent as it crossed Joe Jordan

Road near the intersection of Bryce Street continuing to snap

several softwood trees. The tornado may have continued a little

northeast of here into a small forested area but no notable

convergent damage was noted surveying the areas to the northeast

along TF Giles Drive.

A very active severe weather season continued as an outbreak of severe thunderstorms occurred across the area from the evening of the 30th into the early morning hours on the 31st. A strong spring storm system moved across the area. Ahead of the system plenty of Gulf moisture returned to the central Gulf coast. This led to a very unstable atmosphere over the region which combined to strong wind shear to produce 18 tornadoes which were rated from EF-0 to EF-2. In addition to the tornadoes, the storms produced damaging straight line winds and large hail. Numerous reports of damage came in from southeast Mississippi, southwest Alabama and the western Florida panhandle.