EF1 tornado, Central Springs to Ida Vesper, Georgia, April 10, 2009

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mphthis tornado

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mph

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. EF3136 to 165 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. EF5over 200 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unrated

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

EF1

Date

April 10, 2009

Touchdown

10:00 PM EDT (02:00 UTC)

Lifted

10:06 PM EDT (02:06 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

3.7 miles (5.9 km)

Path width

100 yards (91 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$150,000

County

Chattahoochee County

Touchdown point

32.323, -84.703

Lift-off point

32.310, -84.642

Record number

0904102000-01

5 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS FFC, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 100 mph.

• New builidings under construction in Ft. Benning military base. Above average construction quality. Building materials blown into nearby trees.
• Roof panels missing from chicken house and outbuilding. Damage to a wooden fence in foreground.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A vigorous upper closed low was moving from the mid-south and Mississippi valley region into the mid-Atlantic and southeast U.S. A strong cold front accompanied the upper system. A strong low-level jet in advance of these weather systems transported warm, moist Gulf air northward into the region. With strong dynamics, hence shear, combined with an unusually moist, unstable atmosphere, the atmosphere was primed for a major weather outbreak. One round of thunderstorms passed through north Georgia during the early morning hours. A few minor severe weather events accompanied this system in northwest Georgia. Partial clearing followed the morning convection, allowing temperatures to soar into the mid 70s across much of north and central Georgia in advance of the main weather system. Scattered to numerous discrete supercell thunderstorms developed during mid-afternoon in northwest Georgia and progressed east and southeast across the remaining portions of the county warning area during the evening hours. Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes lingered into the early morning hours of the 11th across the southern counties of central Georgia. During the eight hour period from 5 pm EDT on April 10th to 1 am EDT on April 11th, a total of 14 tornadoes were confirmed to have touched down in north and central Georgia causing millions in damages. While some injuries were observed, no deaths were observed.

A damage survey conducted by the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Peachtree City, Georgia, confirmed that an EF1 tornado had touched down approximately 2.5 miles south of Ochille and continued on an east-southeastward track across central Chattahoochee county, lifting about 4.0 miles east-southeast of its touchdown point. The path width was determined to be 440 yards with maximum winds estimated at 80 mph. The damage appeared to have begun as a downburst, within which the brief EF1 tornado spin up occurred. Combined damage from the downburst and EF1 tornado consisted of destruction of several out buildings and sheds. Hundreds of trees were flattened along the path of the tornado. Another EF1 tornado was spawned from the same supercell thunderstorm, also within Chattahoochee county, just eight minutes later and four miles further east.

A damage survey conducted by the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Peachtree City, Georgia confirmed that a second EF1 tornado touched down within Chattahoochee county from the same parent supercell thunderstorm that spawned an earlier EF1 tornado 2.5 miles south of Ochille. This EF1 tornado touched down approximately 2.5 miles east-northeast of Cusseta and also traveled on the ground about 4.0 miles to the east-southeast just north of and paralleling Georgia Highway 26. The maximum path width was determined to be 100 yards with maximum winds estimated at 80 mph. Minor damage was observed to at least two homes and one church. A 20 by 24 foot metal storage building on Georgia Highway 26 was destroyed. Several other storage sheds or outbuildings along the path of the tornado suffered minor to moderate damage.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

58 minutes of warning. NWS FFC issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:02 UTC, 58 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:00 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 00:12 UTC and running to 06:00 UTC.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 00:30 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

Fort Benning (LSF), 30 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of airport observations.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2009 tornado in GeorgiaEvery tornado in Georgia since 1950Warnings in force in Georgia nowThe forecast where you are

63 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 64 of them

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.