EF1 tornado in Laurens County, Georgia

Tornado April 5, 2022 · Laurens County, Georgia

EF1

Rating

1.8 mi

Whole path

250 yd

Path width

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Bleckley County → Laurens County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 250 yards (0.14 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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

The parent storm responsible for the QLCS tornado which impacted

the south side of Cochran quickly regenerated a new EF1 tornado

near the Bleckley and Laurens county line south of W. Chicken

Road. Trees were snapped and uprooted as the tornado crossed

Branch Road. The tornado quickly reached maximum intensity along

Hillbridge Road where hundreds of trees were snapped an uprooted.

The storm continued east into a wooded area before lifting at

Thompson Road. [4/5/22: Tornado #17, County #2/2, EF-1, Bleckley/Laurens, 2022:020].

The wider storm

A multi-day severe weather outbreak initiated with a warm moist air mass situated over Georgia as a strengthening upper level system pushed across central Georgia. With moderate instability in place with increased shear, combined to create numerous severe thunderstorms, taking the form of a quasi-linear convective system (QLCS) with several strong supercells ahead of the front. The resulting front stalled across central Georgia and interacted with a weaker shortwave moving up from the Gulf of Mexico, serving as a catalyst for another day of severe weather and flash flooding on April 6th.

Began near Alcorns (32.4430, -83.1500).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

22 more tornadoes the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 1022811. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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