EF1 tornado, Blanford to Rahn, Georgia, September 17, 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 mphthis tornado

   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

EF1

Date

September 17, 2020

Touchdown

2:54 AM EDT (06:54 UTC)

Lifted

3:02 AM EDT (07:02 UTC)

On the ground

8 minutes

Path length

2.7 miles (4.3 km)

Path width

150 yards (137 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Effingham County

Touchdown point

32.281, -81.302

Lift-off point

32.318, -81.313

Record number

2009170054-01

7 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS CHS, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 107 mph.

• Trees snapped and uprooted pointing toward Little McCall Rd
• 6 homes had many large snapped trees but no structural damage. Tree in picture fell toward road. Clear convergent path. Center of tornado just right of tree or near Little McCall Road.
• Pine tree snapped at Midway and fell on roof at home in Burnt Tree subdivision. Minor siding damage.
• Tree snap and fell toward road and accoss yard.

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

Tropical Cyclone Sally made landfall along the northeast Gulf Coast and began to track inland into the Southeast region in the early morning hours. Scattered to numerous embedded thunderstorms developed and moved through portions of southeast Georgia, with some producing damaging wind gusts and even a brief tornado.

A National Weather Service storm survey team determined that a EF-1 tornado impacted an area near Blandford in Effingham County. The survey included both ground and aerial observations. The tornado began near the intersection of Low Ground Road and Burnt Tree Drive. Some trees were snapped and uprooted in this area, along with some minor damage to the skirting of a few mobile homes. The tornado continued north-northeastward across a wooded and marshy region, where it snapped and uprooted several trees. As it crossed Little McCall Road, it snapped and uprooted several large trees over the properties of six homes along the road. None of these six homes sustained any significant structure damage. The tornado then moved into the small community of Cypress Cove, where it removed siding and some roof shingles to approximately 18 homes in that community. The tornado reached its maximum intensity, with winds around 100 mph, as it crossed Little McCall Road and into the southern portion o the Cypress Grove community. The tornado quickly dissipated as it crossed the northern part of Cypress Cove, ending near Ralph Rahn Road.

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. One was issued for the county at another hour that day.

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 04:48 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 Charleston,SC radar (KCLX), 47 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 06:54 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

16 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.