EF3 Tornado — Berrien, Georgia

2017-01-22 · near New Lois, Berrien, Georgia

Event narrative

The EF3 tornado from northeast Brooks and Cook counties progressed into Berrien County where it completely removed the second story of a wood frame home on South Coffee Road. Just up the road, a well-strapped double wide home was completely removed and tossed into nearby trees and hedges. The last of the EF3 damage occurred on Old Lois Road where most of the roof of a brick home was removed. An add-on room on the back of the home was flattened by a massive live oak tree crushing two occupants to death in their bed. The tornado continued past Old Valdosta Road stripping bark from several trees in the area and then produced EF2 damage just past U.S. Route 129 on County Road before lifting. 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 → (31.1092, -83.3226)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 673095. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.