Thunderstorm Wind — Columbia, Florida

2017-01-22 · near Suwannee Vly, Columbia, Florida

Event narrative

A large tree was blown down onto a mobile home and split the home in half near Interstate 10 and U.S. Highway 41. There was 1 fatality. There were additional reports of trees and power lines down across Lake City. The time of damage was based on radar.

Wider weather episode

An exceptionally rare high risk of severe storms was issued for the local forecast area with extremely strong shear including a 70 kt 850 mb jet combined with an anomalously deep mid level trough across the Gulf Coast region pumped Gulf of Mexico moisture and instability across the area head of a potent storm system. Two waves of severe storms moved across the forecast area, once during the pre-dawn and early morning hours across SE GA, then another squall line of discrete supercells and leading supercells across both SE GA and NE FL in the afternoon and evening. Three tornado touchdowns were confirmed in SE GA during this time period with 1 fatality in Columbia county Florida due to a tree falling on a mobile home. This was a very unusual strong storm system that brought all modes of severe weather to the Jacksonville Forecast area.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (30.2700, -82.7200)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 668749. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.