EF1 Tornado — Copiah, Mississippi

2024-12-28 · near Ashley, Copiah, Mississippi

Event narrative

This tornado began southeast of Hazlehurst and downed several trees as it moved across Great Southern Rd, Union Rd, Ashley Rd, and MS Highway 472. It then roughly paralleled Cooper Rd before entering Georgetown, where several homes sustained mainly minor roof damage and additional trees were downed. The tornado crossed the Pearl River into western Simpson County before it lifted near Old River Rd. Additional scattered wind damage occurred eastward of this location, but it was less focused until another tornado developed west of Mendenhall. The maximum wind speed was 105 mph.

Wider weather episode

On December 28th, an outbreak of severe weather took place. Initially, a few isolated supercells storms developed and produced some tornadoes. As this occurred, a line of storms also developed and eventually pushed eastward across our region. Widespread damaging winds occurred with the line along with numerous tornadoes. This particular convective system was extremely efficient at producing tornadoes. This resulted in a record number of tornadoes for the month of December. The total across our forecast area was 43. The previous December record was 24 back in 2022.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (31.8130, -90.3093)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1226243. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.