EF0 tornado, Don, Georgia, April 11, 2013

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

April 11, 2013

Touchdown

7:01 PM EDT (23:01 UTC)

Lifted

7:02 PM EDT (23:02 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.4 miles (0.6 km)

Path width

25 yards (23 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$15,000

County

Polk County

Touchdown point

33.988, -84.995

Lift-off point

33.993, -84.993

Record number

1304111701-01

1 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 105 mph.

• 50 Trees snapped and numerous other trees uprooted. Tornado appears to have touched down just east of railroad tracks and then proceeded through open field and did further tree damage.

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

A well-defined upper shortwave pushed through the Deep South in late on the 11th. A strong surface low over the Central Plains early in the day began lifting to the northeast toward the Great Lakes, dragging the associated cold front moved into northwest Georgia late in the day. Numerous showers and thunderstorms developed ahead of the front, with several reports of large hail, including a couple of reports of up to baseball sized hail and several reports of golfball sized hail. Three weak tornadoes occurred as well, two EF-1s and an EF-0.

A National Weather Service storm survey determined that a second brief tornado touched down associated with the same supercell thunderstorm as the Haralson County tornado. The tornado touched down near railroad tracks just south of Coots Lake Road where some trees were uprooted. From this point the tornado traveled to the north-northeast. The most damage occurred in a wooded area 0.3 miles north of where the tornado touched down. At this point approximately 50 trees were snapped and about 25 trees were uprooted. The tornado dissipated in an open area just short of a residence. Damage was confined to trees.|[04/11/13: Tornado #2, County #1-1, EF1, Polk, 2013:006].

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

17 minutes of warning. NWS FFC issued a tornado warning for this county at 22:44 UTC, 17 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 23:17 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 20:49 UTC and running to 00:24 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 19:45 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), 80 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 22:58 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 2013 tornado in GeorgiaEvery tornado in Georgia since 1950Warnings in force in Georgia nowThe forecast where you are

13 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.