EF3 Tornado — Dougherty, Georgia

2017-01-22 · near Pretoria, Dougherty, Georgia

Event narrative

A large, long-track tornado touched down near Dougherty/Baker Co. line and traveled over 70 miles across Dougherty, Worth, Turner, and Wilcox Counties in South Georgia. The tornado lifted just east of Abbeville. The tornado caused significant damage along the track, resulting in 5 fatalities in Albany. Severe tree damage was observed along the entire path which was up to 1.2 miles wide. In many spots, 90 to 100 percent of the trees in the path were uprooted or snapped. In Dougherty County, the tornado touched down on Tarva Road. By the time it reached Newton, the tornado was approximately 1.25 miles wide. There was extensive tree damage and some minor to moderate damage to a few homes in this area, consistent with EF2 damage. The tornado moved through the Radium Springs area, destroying nearly every tree in its path and causing EF2 damage to several houses. Most houses in this area had significant damage from falling trees. The tornado then moved through several mobile home parks just west of U.S. 319, destroying many mobile homes and causing the 4 fatalities. Damage consistent with an EF3 tornado was observed just east of U.S. 319. The tornado caused a large portion of a warehouse at the Proctor and Gamble Plant to collapse and tossed several semi-trailers across Mock Road. Additional EF3 damage was observed at the Marine Corp Logistics Base, where multiple anchored double-wide trailers were completely destroyed. In addition, several concrete light poles were snapped near the base, and a large solid concrete building had its solid concrete roof shifted more than 2 inches. A well-built concrete block church on Sylvester Rd was demolished with only parts of a few walls remaining. The estimated wind speed at this point is 150 mph, the highest analyzed along the track. EF3 damage was also observed on Harris Road where a cement block church was destroyed. Damage estimates exceeded $300 million according to a media article citing the Dougherty County Commissioner.

Wider weather episode

A multi-day severe weather event struck the southeast January 21-22, 2017 with three rounds of severe weather moving through the area. The first round of severe weather started during the mid-morning hours on Saturday, January 21, 2017 as a squall line pushed into southeast Alabama and the Florida panhandle. As it pushed eastward nine warnings were issued with a total of 18 damaging wind reports (trees and power lines downed) related to these storms.

After a brief lull during Saturday evening as the aforementioned squall line washed out near the Gulf Coast, strong southerly flow returned late Saturday night as a warm front pushed northward across the Florida Big Bend and southern Georgia. Initially with this late Saturday night to early Sunday morning event, a strong supercell moved across southern Georgia producing a tornado that moved across Thomas and northern Brooks Counties. This was the first tornado across the area with this multi- day event. From the same supercell that produced the tornado in Thomas and northern Brooks Counties, another tornado developed that tracked across Brooks, Berrien and Cook Counties and this tornado resulted in 11 fatalities. This overnight into early Sunday morning event produced one more tornado, an EF-1 that struck Lowndes County.

A final round of severe weather moved through Sunday afternoon as a warm front continued to push northward into southeast Alabama and southern Georgia while the main low and trailing cold front pushed eastward across the Florida panhandle and offshore regions. This afternoon round of supercells first produced a tornado in Henry County, AL. An hour and a half after the Henry County tornado, two more tornadoes developed, an EF-2 that struck Clay, Randolph and Calhoun Counties (Georgia) and an EF-1 tornado that hit Franklin County, FL. After this, a long tracked tornado (track length of more than 70 miles) moved across Albany (Dougherty County) and into Worth and Turner Counties, causing extensive damage and five fatalities.

Overall this multi-day event resulted in seven tornadoes, 16 deaths and numerous injuries. Three days of damage surveys were conducted to rate the tornadoes on the Enhanced Fujita scale.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (31.4373, -84.3447)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 673010. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.