EF1 tornado, Mt Bethel, Georgia, March 2, 2012

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

March 2, 2012

Touchdown

9:14 PM EST (02:14 UTC)

Lifted

9:15 PM EST (02:15 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

1.4 miles (2.3 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$75,000

County

Cobb County

Touchdown point

33.980, -84.461

Lift-off point

33.980, -84.436

Record number

1203022014-01

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.

• Dozens of large pine trees snapped at East Cobb park.
• Roof damage to a daycare and single family home.
• Minor roof damage to a few homes.
• Heavy wooden railing pulled off second story of a building. Minor roof damage to a house. One tree split.

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

The cold front that stalled across central Georgia on March 1st began advancing back north as a warm front the morning of March 2nd. A secondary, and stronger, cold front moved across the Tennessee Valley late on Friday, advancing into Georgia Friday evening and into central Georgia early Saturday morning. Very warm and moist air ahead of the cold front provided for sufficient instability to produce widespread strong to severe thunderstorms across the region. One supercell produced two tornadoes in north Georgia - an EF3 in Haralson and Paulding Counties and an EF1 in Cobb County. Large hail, damaging winds, and flash flooding also occurred with these storms.

An EF-1 tornado with a maximum wind speed of 100 MPH touched down in Cobb County around 9:14 PM near East Cobb Park along Roswell Road. It continued to track along Roswell Road where it caused roof damage to a daycare and a house near Providence Road. Minor tree and roof damage continued just north of Roswell Road and ended near the Indian Ridge Subdivision around 9:15 PM. The path length was just over a mile with a maximum width of 150 yards.||[03/02/12: Tornado #2, County #1-1, EF1, Cobb, 2012:006].

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

34 minutes of warning. NWS FFC issued a tornado warning for this county at 01:40 UTC, 34 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 02:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 22:45 UTC and running to 03:57 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 Moderate Risk, with a 0.15 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. 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.

The Atlanta radar (KFFC), 69 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 02:14 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 2012 tornado in GeorgiaEvery tornado in Georgia since 1950Warnings in force in Georgia nowThe forecast where you are

69 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 70 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.