EF1 Tornado — Wheeler, Georgia

2024-09-26 · near Jordan, Wheeler, Georgia

Event narrative

A brief tornado occurred in rural Wheeler County ahead of Hurricane Helene during the evening hours of September 26th. The tornado touched down and crossed Hwy 19 near the intersections of Ponderosa Road and Adams Cemetery Road. A few small trees were

snapped, but the main damage was to a mobile home/trailer that was completely destroyed with debris thrown across Hwy 19 into a field about 75 yards away. The mobile home/trailer was not fastened down and there are no pictures of what it looked like before it was hit.

Wider weather episode

Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in the Big Bend region of Florida at 11 PM EDT. Helene moved quickly inland bringing wind gusts between 50 and 100 mph to portions of east and central Georgia. Widespread rainfall totals between 6 and 14 inches were observed in association with Helene across north and central Georgia. The highest rainfall amounts were primarily observed in portions of east-central Georgia and in the Atlanta Metropolitan area. Due to the prolonged heavy rain, numerous instances of flash flooding and river flooding were reported. The combination of strong winds and heavy rain also downed millions of trees with widespread power outages and numerous structures damaged or destroyed, mostly from falling trees. Ahead of Hurricane Helene, there were several showers/storms in the rainbands that had low-level rotation. One of these storms spawned a short-lived tornado occurred in Wheeler County during the evening of the 26th.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.0583, -82.6513)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1217288. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.