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EF0 tornado in Stewart County, Georgia

Tornado March 9, 2022 · Stewart County, Georgia

EF0

Rating

1.1 mi

Path length

75 yd

Path width

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 75 yards (0.04 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

A brief tornado touched down in rural Stewart County in a remote wooded area just southwest of Canyon Road where a TDS signature was observed on radar. Initial observed damage consisted of snapped tree branches and a couple of downed trees in the vicinity of Canyon Road. The tornado then impacted a hunting camp just north of Canyon Road. Metal roofing material was torn off of an overhang at this location and a couple of tree tops were twisted and tree branches were broken. The tornado then appeared to lift in a wooded area just northeast with inaccessible wooded areas beyond this point. [3/9/22: Tornado #1, County #1/1, EF-0, Stewart, 2022:003].

The wider storm

A warm moist airmass was in place due to a stalled boundary across portions of central Georgia. As an upper level trough pushed northeastward, surface cyclogenesis occured over southern Alabama. As the surface low deepened and moved northeastward across Georgia, the stalled boundary retreated north allowing for warm air advection to overspread warmer temps and dewpoints across central Georgia. With modest low-level shear and surface-based instability in place ahead of the approaching surface front, an isolated cyclic supercell developed in west Georgia, producing a brief tornado and warranting severe thunderstorm warnings over the area.

Began near Florence (32.0618, -84.9969).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1016911. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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