EF1 tornado, Red Stone to Thyatira, Georgia, December 29, 2016

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

December 29, 2016

Touchdown

3:50 AM EST (08:50 UTC)

Lifted

4:00 AM EST (09:00 UTC)

On the ground

10 minutes

Path length

3.5 miles (5.6 km)

Path width

250 yards (229 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000

County

Jackson County

Touchdown point

34.108, -83.591

Lift-off point

34.095, -83.532

Record number

1612290250-01

15 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 107 mph.

• Few hardwood trees snapped.

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

A deepening upper-level trough and associated cold front swept across north and central Georgia during the morning. Although instability was limited, strong low and mid-level shear resulted in isolated damaging wind gusts and a tornado.

A National Weather Service storm survey found that an EF-1 tornado, associated with a nocturnal supercell thunderstorm within a broken line of storms, produced damage south of the city of Jefferson in Jackson County. The damage path began with the snapped trunks of small trees southwest of Jefferson, just north of Lee Street/Winder Highway near the intersection with Highway 129. The tornado moved east-southeast to the intersection of M.L. King Jr. Drive and Magnolia Avenue, uprooting and snapping at least a half dozen tress and overturning a small storage shed at the Paradise AME Church. The tornado then crossed Athens Street and moved along Georgia Bell Drive and Dixie Red Avenue uprooting trees and causing minor damage to several homes in the area. The tornado uprooted trees at the end Meadow Lane and along Jefferson River Road before dissipating just north of the intersection of Jefferson River Road and River Meadows Drive around 3.5 miles from its starting point. The maximum winds speeds within this tornado were estimated to be up to 105 MPH with a maximum path width of 250 yards. [12/29/16: Tornado #1, County #1/1, EF1, Jackson, 2016:013].

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 04:41 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.

Jefferson (JCA), 8 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Atlanta radar (KFFC), 124 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 08:53 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 2016 tornado in GeorgiaEvery tornado in Georgia since 1950Warnings in force in Georgia nowThe forecast where you are

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.