EF0 tornado, Vans Vly to Six Mile, Georgia, March 14, 2019

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

March 14, 2019

Touchdown

8:06 PM EDT (00:06 UTC)

Lifted

8:08 PM EDT (00:08 UTC)

On the ground

2 minutes

Path length

1.7 miles (2.7 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Property damage

$50,000

County

Floyd County

Touchdown point

34.119, -85.259

Lift-off point

34.128, -85.231

Record number

1903141806-01

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 EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 80 mph.

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

Scattered thunderstorms developed ahead of deep upper-level rough and associated cold front producing isolated severe thunderstorms and one tornado during the evening of March 14th into the early morning hours of March 15th.

A National Weather Service survey team found that an EF0 tornado with maximum wind speeds of 75 mph and a maximum path width of 150 yards touched down west of Randall Road SW where a few trees were uprooted and a shed was destroyed. The |tornado moved east-northeast across Randall Road to around the intersection of Lyons Bridge Road SW and Booger Hollow Road where it turned northeast along Booger Hollow road. Numerous trees were uprooted or snapped and two homes were damaged just north of the intersection of Booger Hollow Rd and Lyons Bridge Rd. A carport collapsed and portions of the roof of one home and a building beside were peeled and scattered across the yard. Another home adjacent had significant amounts of its metal roofing peeled back allowing rainwater to damage the inside of the home. A trampoline was tossed approximately 100 yards over the second home into the top of a neighbor's tree. Numerous trees were snapped in the forest adjacent the homes. The tornado lifted northeast of the damaged homes before reaching Hwy 27. No injuries were reported. [03/14/19: Tornado #1, County #1/1, EF-0, Floyd, 2019:020].

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

4 minutes of warning. NWS FFC issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:02 UTC, 4 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 00:27 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 23:42 UTC and running to 05:00 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 Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:55 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), 105 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:06 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 2019 tornado in GeorgiaEvery tornado in Georgia since 1950Warnings in force in Georgia nowThe forecast where you are

31 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.