EF0 tornado, Massee, Georgia, May 24, 2017

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

May 24, 2017

Touchdown

4:48 PM EDT (20:48 UTC)

Lifted

4:53 PM EDT (20:53 UTC)

On the ground

5 minutes

Path length

1.1 miles (1.8 km)

Path width

568 yards (519 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$5,000

County

Cook County

Touchdown point

31.166, -83.358

Lift-off point

31.179, -83.346

Record number

1705241448-01

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

• Isolated instances of limbs down. Irrigation pivot along road still standing at this point.
• End of irrigation pivot flipped. Minor porch damage to house across street. Pivot and tree limbs fell in a northerly direction.
• One tree uprooted. Majority large limbs down. pointed in a northerly direction
• 80 yr old trees uprooted. Small barn heavily damaged. Partially built house destroyed. Minor damage to a trailer.

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

A couple of days of severe weather impacted southern Georgia on May 23rd and 24th. Two EF0 tornadoes occurred, and some straight line wind damage also occurred with impacts to trees and power lines.

This tornado started near the intersection of Hutchinson Parrish and Howard Bennett Roads and moved north-northeast across an open field, growing in size to roughly 0.3 miles wide. The tornado then impacted an irrigation pivot along the south side of Boone Road, before impacting several residences on the north side of Boone Road. While there were sporadic instances of trees uprooted or snapped, all structural damage associated with this tornado was minor and mainly limited to the loss of metal roofs and shingles. Damage cost was estimated.

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.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 15:05 UTC and running to 00:05 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 Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:06 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 Moody AFB radar (KVAX), 46 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 20:46 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 2017 tornado in GeorgiaEvery tornado in Georgia since 1950Warnings in force in Georgia nowThe forecast where you are

26 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.