EF1 Tornado — Coffee, Georgia

2024-01-09 · near Nicholls, Coffee, Georgia

Event narrative

An EF1 tornado with peak winds near 110 mph raced NE from just west of Nicholls in Coffee County to Norman Cole Circle in west-central Bacon County before it dissipated. Most damage occurred to trees and farm buildings, with some outbuildings totally destroyed. The tornado continued to track NE crossing Roberts Cemetery Road, Dove Lane and Honey Suckle Road where EF1 strength continued to caused tree and outbuilding structure damage, including large hardwood trees blown down and uprooted. The tornado continued NE and entered into Bacon County where it crossed Indian Road, Black River Road and Florida Road where trees and outbuildings were damaged. The tornado maintained EF1 strength as it damaged well-built structures including a car port, outbuildings, farm buildings and trees along Norman Cold Circle before dissipating around 1:05 pm EST.

Wider weather episode

A strong pre-frontal squall line of strong to severe storms moved quickly eastward across SE GA and NE FL during the afternoon and exited off the SE GA coast into the Atlantic waters by the late afternoon and offshore of the NE FL coast by the evening. Strong dynamics with this system included a very strong low-level jet of 45-55 knots and 0-6 km shear of 50-70 knots, which along with good lapse rates aloft around 6.5 C/km and high dewpoints into the upper 60s created 500-800 J/KG of CAPE. These ingredients promoted threat of damaging wind gusts of 50-70 mph or greater, hail, and isolated tornadoes within more intense storms embedded within the Squall line.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (31.5200, -82.6600)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1198454. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.