EF2 tornado, Torbit Station to Greens Cut, Georgia, April 13, 2020

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

April 13, 2020

Touchdown

4:53 AM EDT (08:53 UTC)

Lifted

5:07 AM EDT (09:07 UTC)

On the ground

14 minutes

Path length

16.5 miles (26.5 km)

Path width

700 yards (640 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Burke County

Touchdown point

33.107, -82.192

Lift-off point

33.227, -81.945

Record number

2004130253-01

56 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS CAE, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF2. The highest wind the damage implies is 125 mph.

• Several snapped pine trees.
• Large but diseased hardwood tree snapped.
• Several snapped and uprooted trees.
• Trees snapped and uprooted.

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

A squall line rolled through the region during the early morning hours of April 13, 2020. Strong instability and shear led to numerous severe thunderstorm wind gusts along with several tornadoes. Across East Central GA, one EF-2 tornado occurred.

A tornado touched down northeast of Vidette in Burke County, GA near Highway 80. The tornado continued in a general northeastern direction, crossing Quaker Road, US 25, and dissipated near Highway 56 and Collins Road. The tornado produced mainly EF-0 and EF-1 damage along its path, but reached EF-2 intensity in several locations with peak wind speeds of 125 mph. The tornado had a path length of approximately 17 miles with a path width of around 700 yards. ||The tornado uprooted or snapped a significant amount of trees along its entire path. Along Highway 80, a former auto service cinder block building had its bay doors blown in, causing the roof to lift off and some of the block walls to collapse. Along Coursey Road, nearly all of the pine trees snapped in a field and a couple of houses had significant roof damage. A couple of pecan groves had significant damage with many pecan trees snapped or uprooted near Quaker Road and Taylor Road. West of Story Mill Road near George Perkins Road, there were an extensive amount of hardwood trees snapped and uprooted, with many of them falling on a home and vehicle. Major damage also occurred at a dairy farm along Highway 25, where metal posts supporting a canopy bent and snapped over a feeding area, a feed shed had its roof torn off and the metal framing bent and several other structures on the property had significant roof damage or total roof loss.

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

12 minutes of warning. NWS CAE issued a tornado warning for this county at 08:41 UTC, 12 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 09:15 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 07:20 UTC and running to 10:37 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 General Thunderstorms Risk. The outlook in force was issued at 05:50 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.

Augusta/Bush Field (AGS), 25 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Charleston,SC radar (KCLX), 111 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 08:56 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 2020 tornado in GeorgiaEvery tornado in Georgia since 1950Warnings in force in Georgia nowThe forecast where you are

67 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

All 68 of them

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.