EF2 tornado, Cairo, Georgia, March 3, 2019

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 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mphthis tornado

   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

EF2

Date

March 3, 2019

Touchdown

7:54 PM EST (00:54 UTC)

Lifted

8:00 PM EST (01:00 UTC)

On the ground

6 minutes

Path length

2.7 miles (4.3 km)

Path width

800 yards (732 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

2

Property damage

$1.0 million

County

Grady County

Touchdown point

30.862, -84.232

Lift-off point

30.882, -84.194

Record number

1903031854-01

23 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS ABR and NWS TAE, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 122 mph.

• Failure of roof and side of the building.
• Tree fell on home. Crushed portion of roof.
• Roof was destroyed. House built around 1900.
• Tree snapped . Edge of main damage.

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

This event featured all modes of severe weather in our forecast area, including 13 tornadoes, numerous reports of straight-line wind damage, and even large hail. The 13 tornadoes consisted of 1 EF3, 2 EF2s, 6 EF1s, and 4 EF0s. This is a very high number of tornadoes for our forecast area for a single event. This compares with 7 tornadoes in the 1/22/17 event, 8 tornadoes in the 1/2/17 event, and 10 tornadoes in the 3/1/07 event. This may have been the most tornadoes for a single event in our area since the Hurricane Ivan tornadoes back in 2004. The synoptic pattern was characterized by a fast-moving upper trough through relatively zonal flow. The forecast area was under the favorable right entrance region of the upper jet with lots of upper level divergence. An 850 mb jet near or in excess of 50 knots was also present, which is another typical ingredient for severe weather in this part of the country in the cool season. Cool season levels of shear (0-1 km shear > 30 knots and 0-6 km shear > 50 knots) were overlaid with moderate levels of instability (SBCAPE 1500 j/kg), as opposed to more typical winter SBCAPE < 500 j/kg. Without this strong low-level jet, the low-level shear values would have been weaker and we would have probably seen less tornadoes.

An EF-2 tornado, with maximum winds of 120 mph, tracked 2.7 miles across Grady County in the Cairo area. The tornado touched down on Monrovia Nursery, downing 100s of potted plants and numerous trees in the forest. The tornado continued to track|northeastward, downing numerous trees, many of which fell on homes causing structural damage. In one of the harder hit areas, the roof was torn off of a single family home and a carport was destroyed. The tornado eventually lifted northeast of Hwy 84. Two injuries were sustained from the storm. Damage cost was estimated.

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

3 minutes of warning. NWS TAE issued a tornado warning for this county at 00:51 UTC, 3 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 01:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 17:25 UTC and running to 01:44 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 Slight Risk, with a 0.05 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 20:00 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.

The Tallahassee radar (KTLH), 54 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:53 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 2019 tornado in GeorgiaEvery tornado in Georgia since 1950Warnings in force in Georgia nowThe forecast where you are

44 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.