EF1 tornado in Coffee County, Georgia

This tornado begin in northern Atkinson county and tracked NE around 50 mph across southern Coffee county before it lifted near Mora Road. As the tornado moved across Coffee, it produced EF1 damage with peak winds near 110 mph. The tornado crossed the Atkinson/Coffee county line across Brawns Johnson Road near a residence within the 400 block. Extensive tree damage including snapped and leveled pine trees and some damage to hard woods was observed along the tornado track including along Talmadge McKinnon Road, Brawns Johnson Road and along portions of the Mora Highway between County Roads 48 and 30 where four chicken houses were damaged, including two completely destroyed. There was also additional extensive property damage to agricultural structures occurred along this path.

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.