EF0 tornado, Browns Crossing to Milledgeville Arpt, Georgia, May 3, 2010

1. EF065 to 85 mphthis tornado

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

2. EF186 to 110 mph

   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

EF0

Date

May 3, 2010

Touchdown

2:02 PM EDT (18:02 UTC)

Lifted

2:15 PM EDT (18:15 UTC)

On the ground

13 minutes

Path length

7.8 miles (12.6 km)

Path width

75 yards (69 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$75,000

County

Baldwin County

Touchdown point

33.064, -83.334

Lift-off point

33.136, -83.230

Record number

1005031202-01

A deep upper-level trough was shifting slowly east from the central U.S. into the eastern U.S. A leading cold front was located from New York to Alabama. A summerlike subtropical ridge across the southeast U.S. was slowly shifting off the southeast U.S. coast. The highly meridional flow had allowed an unusually deep tropical air mass to spread far northward across the eastern half of the U.S. This weather system had been responsible for widespread catastrophic flooding in western and middle Tennessee during the previous three days. As the system moved toward Georgia, it began to weaken considerably and the main dynamics lifted northeast more toward the mid-Atlantic. Nonetheless, the slow movement of the system brought several rounds of showers and thunderstorms to the area with two-day rainfall of 3-4 inches. Flash flooding was observed in several counties on the northwest and west side of Atlanta, some of the same counties that experienced catastrophic flooding during late September 2009. Flash flooding during this event was far less significant. Severe weather was isolated and confined to east central Georgia toward the end of the event on the 3rd.

Information and evidence received from the Baldwin County Emergency Management Agency and Fox 24 Television of Macon, Georgia, along with a subsequent tornado survey conducted by the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Peachtree City, GA, confirmed that an EF0 tornado tracked across northern Baldwin county, from just northwest to just northeast of Milledgeville. The tornado touched down near the intersection of Pettigrew Road and Willie J. Brown Jr. Road, or approximately 3/4 mile west-southwest of the intersection of Georgia Highway 22 and Pettigrew Road. From here, the tornado traveled on a sporadic approximately eight mile-long path to the east-northeast, just north of Milledgeville, ending at the western edge of the Milledgeville Country Club, along North Jefferson Street just north of Log Cabin Road. The maximum path width was estimated to be 75 yards wide and maximum wind gusts were estimated to be 75 to 80 mph. The majority of the damage occurred at the beginning and ending points of the tornado, with just sporadic tree damage in between. At the beginning point along Pettigrew Road, several large hardwood trees were either snapped or uprooted. A portion of a metal roof was ripped off one side of a home and tossed into the neighboring trees. At the ending point of the tornado, along North Jefferson Street, a porch was ripped off the side of one home and scattered about the adjacent woods. The adjacent home suffered minor to moderate roof damage. Several trees in the area were either uprooted or snapped. Portions of North Jefferson Street were blocked for several hours from downed trees. Several large hardwood trees were downed just west of the Milledgeville Country Club's maintenance facility, where the tornado appeared to lift.

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

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 16:21 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.

Milledgeville (MLJ), 7 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Robins AFB radar (KJGX), 48 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:01 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

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 2010 tornado in GeorgiaEvery tornado in Georgia since 1950Warnings in force in Georgia nowThe forecast where you are

2 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

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.