EF0 tornado, Waleska to Canton Cherokee Arpt, Georgia, January 11, 2014

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

January 11, 2014

Touchdown

7:37 AM EST (12:37 UTC)

Lifted

7:41 AM EST (12:41 UTC)

On the ground

4 minutes

Path length

2.9 miles (4.7 km)

Path width

10 yards (9 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$3,000

County

Cherokee County

Touchdown point

34.333, -84.529

Lift-off point

34.348, -84.481

Record number

1401110637-01

4 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS FFC, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 80 mph.

• Large tree was downed - damage to the fence.
• A couple of trees snapped or uprooted. Fell across the road.

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

A cold front approached the area from the west early on the 11th as an area of cold air damming in place across northeast Georgia began retreating into the Carolinas. Showers and a few thunderstorms pushed across north Georgia during the early morning hours, but then right after sunrise as the cold front approached the wedge front, thunderstorms intensified and became severe with mainly wind damage reported. Heavy downpours of rain caused localized flash flooding in the Atlanta metro area. One weak tornado also touched down in Cherokee County. The line of thunderstorms pushed further southeast with scattered reports of mainly wind damage through the morning and early afternoon hours.

A National Weather Service Storm Survey determined that a brief EF-0 tornado touched down in Cherokee County. Although the total path length was three miles, the tornado skipped along the ground with sporadic damage. Several trees were downed along a path that stretched from 1.75 miles northeast of Waleska to 4.5 miles northeast of Waleska. In addition to the downed trees, a fence near the starting point of the tornado was damaged when a tree fell on it.|[01/11/14: Tornado #1, County #1-1, EF0, Cherokee, 2014:001].

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

8 minutes of warning. NWS FFC issued a tornado warning for this county at 12:29 UTC, 8 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 13:00 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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:48 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), 109 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 12:35 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 2014 tornado in GeorgiaEvery tornado in Georgia since 1950Warnings in force in Georgia nowThe forecast where you are

3 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.