EF1 Tornado — Pickens, Georgia

2011-09-05 · near Nelson, Pickens, Georgia

Event narrative

The Pickens County Emergency Management Director confirmed that the EF1 tornado, which originally touched down in far southern Cherokee county just west of Woodstock and continued on a north-northeastward track across eastern Cherokee county, entered Pickens county at the city of Nelson. Damage in Pickens county remained consistent with an EF1 rating. From here, the tornado continued north-northeast to just past Marble Hill before finally lifting. Within Pickens county the tornado had a path length of approximately five miles with a maximum path width of 220 yards or 1/8 mile. Eleven homes were damaged along the path of the tornado within Pickens county. One of these homes was completely removed from its foundation and destroyed. Four other homes suffered major damage, three with moderate damage, and the remaining three minor damage. The majority of this damage was in the Marble Hill community. In addition, three structures at the Emory Marble Plant in Marble Hill suffered major damage. Dozens of medium to large-sized trees, including several large oak trees, were downed along the path of the tornado. Several roads were completely blocked as a result, including a portion of Georgia Highway 53 between Tate and Marble Hill.

[09/05/11: Tornado #1, County #2-2, EF1, Cherokee-Pickens, 2011:025].

Wider weather episode

Tropical Storm Lee formed from a persistent low pressure area off the upper Texas and Louisiana coasts on the south side of a mammoth subtropical ridge centered across the eastern Ohio valley. This occurred during the late few days of August. The system slowly intensified under weak steering currents and moved onshore the Louisiana coast on the 3rd. Tropical Storm Lee was extremely slow moving at this point and consequently dumped excessive rainfall across southeast Louisiana. A sharp upper trough began to take shape in the central U.S. on September 4th as upper energy dug southeast from Canada. As this occurred, the remnants of Lee began to accelerate northeastward in association with the advancing upper trough. The remnants of Lee traveled very quickly along the advancing front, racing across Georgia on the 5th. Rain bands began to affect the area late on the 4th, but most of these were light to moderate. On the 5th, persistent heavy rain impacted northwest Georgia and resulted in minor flooding. Despite widespread rainfall of four to five inches across northwest Georgia with localized six to eight inches, the ongoing drought across the state resulted in minimal impacts of the heavy rain on the area, The bigger problems came during the afternoon of the 5th when an area of strong shear, associated with the remnants of Lee, tracked from southwest to northeast across the area. This combined with an unstable atmosphere as breaks in the clouds allowed temperatures to warm into the lower 80s. Numerous strong thunderstorm cells developed quickly and tracked first from the Columbus area and west central Georgia into northeast Georgia. Strong mesocyclones were indicated in many of these cells and prompted dozens of tornado warnings. However, only one thunderstorm cell actually netted a tornado, which caused considerable damage in Cherokee county, just northwest of Atlanta.

As the outer remnant feeder bands moved away from the area during the mid-evening, the remnant core of Tropical Storm Lee passed by just to the west across northwest Alabama. A two to three hour window of strong winds gusting to 35 to 40 mph were observed in several northwest Georgia counties as this occurred causing damage to dozens of trees and a number of power lines during this time frame.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (34.3799, -84.3634)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 346714. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.