EF0 Tornado — Ware, Georgia

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

Event narrative

Around 205 pm EDT, a tornado was reported along Clough Bay Road North in Ware county about 2 miles SSE of Waresboro. GEMA coordinator relayed that there were 15 structure damaged by the tornado in Ware county, with 4 of the structures having minor damage and 6 with major damage. There were 1400 totoal without power. At 219 pm, law enforcment reported a tornado in Pierce county first moving in from the west near Highway 84 and the Sunnyside area, traveling along St. Johns Church Road and Riggins Road into the march northeast of Rigggins Road. The path was about 9 miles and the tornado was on the ground from 2:19 to 2:28 pm. Widespread tree damage occurred, billboards were destroyed and there was roof damage along the path.

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 → (31.2200, -82.4700)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 879279. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.