EF1 tornado in Liberty County, Georgia

A National Weather Service Storm Survey Team confirmed an EF-1 tornado with an estimated maximum wind speed of 100 mph, which tracked from southern Liberty County into southern Bryan County. This tornado began just east of Interstate 95 near Dorchester Village Road, snapping and uprooting numerous trees along its path, followed by destroying a small cinder block building and causing roof damage to a few homes and a church near Islands Highway. The tornado then continued a path east-northeast, producing sporadic snapping and uprooting tree damage while crossing Sunbury Road and Brigantine Dunmore Road, before shifting across the Medway River into southern Bryan County where damage was more consistent with an EF-0 rating.

A severe quasi-linear convective system (QLCS) moved through southeast Georgia during the early morning hours of April 13, 2020 ahead of an approaching cold front. The environment ahead of the QLCS was unusually unstable for this time of day and year, with gulf moisture spreading upper 60 F to near 70 F dewpoints into a warm sector across the Southeast United States and mid level lapse rates around 7 C/km helping produce mixed layer convective available potential energy (MLCAPE) as high as 2000 J/kg across Southeast Georgia. Within the warm sector, very strong vertical shear associated with a 50 knot plus low and mid-level jet, effective bulk shear around 70 knots, effective storm relative helicity in the 400-600 m2/s2 range, and VAD wind profiles displaying large, curved low-level hodographs were supportive of well organized convection and potentially embedded supercell thunderstorms in a QLCS capable of producing a prolonged path of damaging winds and strong long-track tornadoes. As the QLCS swept through Southeast Georgia, a few thunderstorms became exceptionally strong supercell thunderstorms embedded within or while becoming partially separated from the main line of thunderstorms, producing straight-line wind damage and a series of tornadoes across a few counties. A total of 4 confirmed tornadoes occurred across Southeast Georgia, mainly from 2 long-lived storms, one of which started in Screven County and continued northeast into South Carolina, producing widespread wind damage and destructive long track or intermittent tornadoes for over 150 miles. The second storm, produced a path of straight-line wind damage and intermittent tornadoes along a path further south, starting outside the area across Wayne County, then tracking east-northeast into Long County and continuing across Liberty County and Bryant County, before shifting offshore along the Southeast Georgia coast.