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EF0 tornado in Sumter County, Georgia

Tornado March 26, 2011 · Sumter County, Georgia

EF0

Rating

0.7 mi

Whole path

200 yd

Path width

$30K

Damage as recorded

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

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 200 yards (0.11 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 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 damage survey conducted by the National Weather Service and the Sumter and Crisp County Emergency Management Offices confirmed that a brief EF0 tornado touched down on the Sumter county side of Lake Blackshear, approximately two miles south-southwest of Georgia Veterans Memorial State Park and lifted on the Crisp county side of Lake Blackshear. The tornado traveled a total length of 3/4 mile from Sumter into Crisp county, with approximately 0.4 mile of this tornado path length within Sumter county. The maximum path width was estimated to be 200 yards with maximum wind gusts estimated to be 80 mph. Within Sumter county, two homes on the west shore of Lake Blackshear were damaged from downed trees. A few docks on the west side also suffered minor damage. No damage was observed on the Crisp county side of the lake as the tornado lifted before reaching the east shore of the lake. Note, this was the first tornado to touch down within the Peachtree City, Georgia county warning area during 2011.

[03/26-03/27/11: Tornado #1, County #1-2, EF0, Sumter-Crisp, 2011:001].

The wider storm

A quasi-stationary frontal boundary extended from north Texas to north Georgia early on the 26th. The front took two to three days to move from north Georgia southward to the Gulf Coast. The upper flow was highly zonal, but embedded with numerous vigorous short waves. An unseasonably warm, unstable air mass presided south of the frontal boundary. Numerous areas and complexes of thunderstorms developed in waves repeatedly along the front boundary and plagued north and central Georgia for two to three days. Many counties across the area were impacted by golf ball and larger hail. There was one report of hail over four inches in diameter in west central Georgia near Newnan. While hail was the predominate severe weather type with this outbreak, there were several reports of damaging winds and even one tornado in central Georgia. In addition, there were several lightning incidents as many of the storms produced intense cloud-to-ground lightning.

Began near Flintside (31.9196, -83.9330).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

EF1 Laurens County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 290235. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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