EF1 tornado, Graham to Baxley, Georgia, January 22, 2017

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

January 22, 2017

Touchdown

5:52 AM EST (10:52 UTC)

Lifted

5:58 AM EST (10:58 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

11.1 miles (17.9 km)

Path width

1,900 yards (1737 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Appling County

Touchdown point

31.740, -82.543

Lift-off point

31.783, -82.360

Record number

1701220452-01

3 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS JAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 104 mph.

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

An exceptionally rare high risk of severe storms was issued for the local forecast area with extremely strong shear including a 70 kt 850 mb jet combined with an anomalously deep mid level trough across the Gulf Coast region pumped Gulf of Mexico moisture and instability across the area head of a potent storm system. Two waves of severe storms moved across the forecast area, once during the pre-dawn and early morning hours across SE GA, then another squall line of discrete supercells and leading supercells across both SE GA and NE FL in the afternoon and evening. Three tornado touchdowns were confirmed in SE GA during this time period with 1 fatality in Columbia county Florida due to a tree falling on a mobile home. This was a very unusual strong storm system that brought all modes of severe weather to the Jacksonville Forecast area.

The tornado started in extreme western Appling County, possibly extreme SE Jeff Davis county and tracked NE at 50-60 mph before lifting along the NW part of the town of Baxley. The event occurred mainly along or parallel to Zoar Road. The peak wind was near 110 mph in the vicinity of County Farm Road. The most significant damage was in the area near Zoar Methodist Church where structural damage occurred to the church including roof damage and tilting the steeple and other outbuildings in the area. Extensive tree damage occurred to both hard and softwood trees with trees uprooted, snapped and large limbs twisted.

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

9 minutes of warning. NWS JAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 10:43 UTC, 9 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 11:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 08:21 UTC and running to 17:47 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 06:00 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.

Baxley (BHC), 8 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

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 2017 tornado in GeorgiaEvery tornado in Georgia since 1950Warnings in force in Georgia nowThe forecast where you are

20 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.