EF3 Tornado — Turner, Georgia

2017-01-22 · near Hobby, Turner, Georgia

Event narrative

This is a continuation of the EF3 tornado from Worth and Dougherty counties. The tornado entered Turner County along and north of Son Story Road with max winds estimated around 150 mph. Damage to a frame home along Ireland road was consistent with EF3 damage. Additional EF2 damage was found along this road. There was also some evidence for multiple vortices near the intersection of Ireland Road and U.S. 41. Additional EF3 damage was observed on King Burgess Circle where a large frame house was severely damaged and multiple mobile homes were destroyed. The tornado continued northeast across Interstate 75 causing EF2 damage to several frame homes and mobile homes. Tree damage diminished as the tornado approach the Wilcox county line, suggesting that the tornado temporarily weakened. The Turner county emergency manager said up to 25 people were injured in Turner county. Damage cost was estimated.

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 → (31.7096, -83.7969)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 673016. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.