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EF0 tornado in Barrow County, Georgia

Tornado March 21, 2017 · Barrow County, Georgia

EF0

Rating

0.1 mi

Path length

100 yd

Path width

$20K

Damage as recorded

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 100 yards (0.06 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF0 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF0 is light damage: shingles and siding peeled, gutters torn, branches broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 65–85 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

A National Weather Service survey team found that a brief tornado developed along the leading edge of a larger swath of strong thunderstorm winds. The EF-0 tornado with maximum winds of 85 MPH and a maximum path width of 100 Yards began near the Barrow County Airport east of Winder along Sunset Drive. The tornado travelled between .1 and .2 miles along Sunset Drive snapping or uprooting several large trees and destroying a barn. Pieces of the barn were carried nearly a quarter of a mile. [03/21/17: Tornado #1, County #1/1, EF-0, Barrow, 2017:031].

The wider storm

A large mesoscale convective complex developed along a cold front across central and southern Tennessee in response to a series of short waves sweeping through the region. These thunderstorms encountered an unstable and moderately-sheared atmosphere as they moved south into north Georgia producing numerous, widespread reports of large hail and damaging thunderstorm winds as well as two isolated tornadoes.

Began near Winder Arpt (33.9807, -83.6548).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

1 more tornado the National Weather Service filed under this storm episode.

EF1 Jackson County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 689915. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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