Hail — Ware, Georgia

2020-04-23 · near Waycross, Ware, Georgia

Event narrative

The public posted a picture of quarter size hail on a porch swing in Waycross.

Wider weather episode

A very active weather pattern occurred across the area during the afternoon and lasted overnight as a couple of pre-frontal troughs pivoted across the local bringing a couple rounds of severe storms as the surface low pressure center tracked over the mid-Mississippi Valley during the morning then over the Tennessee Valley into the afternoon. Phased upper level dynamics, an unseasonally moisture airmass, high shear including 0-6 km shear of 60-70 and 0-1 km shear of 20-30, high instability of 500-2000 J/kg surface CAPEs and steep mid level lapse rates near 7 deg C/km all supported a variety of weather threats as these prefrontal troughs moved across the local area. During the afternoon, a pre-frontal cluster of storms raced across SE GA with a very long lived supercell producing multiple tornadoes from across SW GA including Adel to a local touchdown near northern Clinch county near Cogdell then onward to Waycross. This same supercell continued to track NE toward Glynn county and the cities of Hortense and Sterling where it produced very strong downburst damage. During the evening hours, an outflow boundary from the earlier GA storms stalled across NE FL south of the I-10 corridor. The more unstable airmass was south of this boundary as yet another round of severe storms approached from the FL panhandle with a QLCS structure. These storms produced wind damage across NE FL as they tracked across the area through the evening and early morning hours through 4/24.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (31.2100, -82.3500)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 878970. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.