EF0 tornado, Waresboro to Waycross, Georgia, April 23, 2020

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

April 23, 2020

Touchdown

2:05 PM EDT (18:05 UTC)

Lifted

2:29 PM EDT (18:29 UTC)

On the ground

24 minutes

Path length

9.0 miles (14.4 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Ware County

Touchdown point

31.220, -82.470

Lift-off point

31.240, -82.320

Record number

2004231205-01

1 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS JAX, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0. The highest wind the damage implies is 88 mph.

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

A very active weather pattern occurred across the area during the afternoon and lasted overnight as a couple of pre-frontal troughs pivoted across the local bringing a couple rounds of severe storms as the surface low pressure center tracked over the mid-Mississippi Valley during the morning then over the Tennessee Valley into the afternoon. Phased upper level dynamics, an unseasonally moisture airmass, high shear including 0-6 km shear of 60-70 and 0-1 km shear of 20-30, high instability of 500-2000 J/kg surface CAPEs and steep mid level lapse rates near 7 deg C/km all supported a variety of weather threats as these prefrontal troughs moved across the local area. During the afternoon, a pre-frontal cluster of storms raced across SE GA with a very long lived supercell producing multiple tornadoes from across SW GA including Adel to a local touchdown near northern Clinch county near Cogdell then onward to Waycross. This same supercell continued to track NE toward Glynn county and the cities of Hortense and Sterling where it produced very strong downburst damage. During the evening hours, an outflow boundary from the earlier GA storms stalled across NE FL south of the I-10 corridor. The more unstable airmass was south of this boundary as yet another round of severe storms approached from the FL panhandle with a QLCS structure. These storms produced wind damage across NE FL as they tracked across the area through the evening and early morning hours through 4/24.

Around 205 pm EDT, a tornado was reported along Clough Bay Road North in Ware county about 2 miles SSE of Waresboro. GEMA coordinator relayed that there were 15 structure damaged by the tornado in Ware county, with 4 of the structures having minor damage and 6 with major damage. There were 1400 totoal without power. At 219 pm, law enforcment reported a tornado in Pierce county first moving in from the west near Highway 84 and the Sunnyside area, traveling along St. Johns Church Road and Riggins Road into the march northeast of Rigggins Road. The path was about 9 miles and the tornado was on the ground from 2:19 to 2:28 pm. Widespread tree damage occurred, billboards were destroyed and there was roof damage along the path.

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

24 minutes of warning. NWS JAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 17:41 UTC, 24 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 18:30 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 14:52 UTC and running to 20:58 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 Enhanced Risk, with a 0.10 chance of a tornado within 25 miles, in the hatched area where significant tornadoes were expected. The outlook in force was issued at 15:58 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.

Waycross/Ware Co. (AYS), 2 km from the path, in the two hours either side.

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

The Moody AFB radar (KVAX), 69 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:06 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 2020 tornado in GeorgiaEvery tornado in Georgia since 1950Warnings in force in Georgia nowThe forecast where you are

29 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.