EF3 Tornado — Macon, Tennessee

2008-02-05 · near Green Grove, Macon, Tennessee

Event narrative

Thirteen people were killed, and 44 folks were injured. Most of the fatalities occurred in Williams, just northwest of Lafayette. Also, 170 homes were destroyed, and 9 homes had major damage.

There was one indirect fatality, a male 48 years of age, due to carbon monoxide poisoning in his home from a generator on Feb. 6, 2008.

Pres. George W. Bush toured Macon County destruction on February 8th and promised relief to individuals.

The logging industry in Macon County was hit hard. About a million dollars worth of trees were destroyed, which will take decades to replenish. It was estimated that the tornado outbreak did 10 million dollars worth of damage to trees in the state of Tennessee.

One large brick home worth about 350 thousand dollars was poorly built. The bricks rested on cinder blocks that were not cemented. This was noticed on a storm survey.

Schools were closed for over a week, and classes did not start again until Tuesday, February 19.

FEMA spent 4.1 million dollars for housing displaced residents in trailers.

Wider weather episode

The Super Severe Weather Outbreak on Feb. 5, 2008 produced supercelluar thunderstorms, well in advance of a multicell line of thunderstorms. The whole episode lasted about 6 hours. This occurred ironically while many states, including Tennessee, were participating in the Super Tuesday Primary Election. Fortunately, polls had already closed in the mid state when these tornadoes struck.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (36.4646, -86.1815)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 79653. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.