Thunderstorm Wind — Butts, Georgia

2011-04-04 · near Jenkinsburg, Butts, Georgia

Event narrative

The Butts County Emergency Management Director reported that over 100 trees were down across the entire county. One large tree fell on a home on Seventh Street in Jackson killing a 34-year old man along with his 4-year old son. In addition to the widespread tree damage, the side of an outbuilding near Stark suffered significant damage when one side was blown away.

Wider weather episode

An extremely progressive and highly kinematic upper flow remained in place across the U.S. A deep, full-latitude negatively tilted trough and associated strong Pacific cold front swept through the eastern U.S. April 4th into April 5th. An intense northeast to southwest oriented squall line of thunderstorms accompanied this front. Wind gusts of 60 to 70 mph were common along this line of thunderstorms as it traversed the entire Peachtree City (WFO FFC), Georgia Weather Forecast county warning area. Nearly every county received at least one severe thunderstorm warning during this event and nearly every county experienced extensive wind damage from these thunderstorms. Two brief EF0 tornadoes also occurred with this event in Gilmer county of north central Georgia. Downed trees on homes and vehicles also caused 7 fatalities during this event, the most in any single weather event since the catastrophic floods of late September 2009. Even several hours after the storms had passed, at least 50,000 residents of north and central Georgia remained without power.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (33.3200, -84.0473)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 294862. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.