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EF1 tornado in Jackson County, Georgia

Tornado March 21, 2017 · Jackson County, Georgia

EF1

Rating

0.4 mi

Path length

100 yd

Path width

$75K

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 EF1 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 is moderate damage: roofs badly stripped, mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned, windows broken, consistent with estimated gusts of 86–110 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 an EF-1 tornado that began south of New Kings Bridge Road southeast of Jefferson where it destroyed a home under construction. The tornado then travelled east for just under a half of a mile across an open field where it snapped and uprooted several trees before ending near Jefferson River Road where it caused minor damage to another home. Maximum winds reached 95 MPH and the maximum path width was 100 yards. [03/21/17: Tornado #2, County #1/1, EF-1, Jackson, 2017:032].

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 Clarksboro (34.0580, -83.4923).

Other tornadoes from the same storm system

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

EF0 Barrow County

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 689926. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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