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EF2 tornado in Grady County, Georgia

Tornado February 19, 2009 · Grady County, Georgia

EF2
Rating
16.4 mi
Whole path
250 yd
Path width
$11.0M
Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Grady County → Thomas 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 EF2 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF2 is considerable damage: roofs torn off well-built houses, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, consistent with estimated gusts of 111–135 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 tornado touched down near Rawls and Lewis Roads just west of Georgia Highway 93. Damage along Rawls Road was limited to uprooted or snapped trees. One horse trailer was tipped over. The tornado continued eastward and moved a double wide modular home off its foundation on the west side of Holstein Lane. On the east side of Holstein Lane, a large cinder-block building was severely damaged, with the top level of the structure destroyed and lower west- and south-side facing walls collapsed. Three large grain silos south of the building were damaged or destroyed, and two large barns 50 yards to the east were destroyed. The tornado crossed Georgia Highway 93 just north of Lewis Road and plowed through a pine forest along the north side of Lower Cairo Road. Before crossing into Thomas County, over 95 percent of the trees near Plantation Drive adjacent to Lower Cairo Road were snapped. According to the Grady County Emergency Management Agency, a total of 15 homes were damaged, with about 300 residents without power.

The wider storm

Just after midnight on the 19th, a long track supercell thunderstorm spawned an EF-2 tornado south of Cairo in Grady County. The tornado raced to the east into Thomas County, causing EF-2 damage just south of Thomasville. A second tornado developed and produced EF-3 damage near Boston.

Began near Princes Still (30.8043, -84.1820).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

1 more tornado the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 154820. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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