EF0 tornado, Headlight, Georgia, January 4, 2023

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

January 4, 2023

Touchdown

12:35 PM EST (17:35 UTC)

Lifted

12:36 PM EST (17:36 UTC)

On the ground

1 minutes

Path length

0.6 miles (1.0 km)

Path width

300 yards (274 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Clinch County

Touchdown point

30.812, -82.648

Lift-off point

30.816, -82.639

Record number

2301041135-01

9 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 87 mph.

• Several trees knocked down
• RV rolled over about 15 feet, several pine trees snapped, manufactured outhouse smashed,

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

A line of pre-frontal severe storms, some of which produced tornadoes, tracked across SE GA during the afternoon and early evening hours. A tornado watch was in effect for portions of the area.

A line of thunderstorms tracked across Clinch county in the early afternoon and produced a brief EF0 tornado over south-central Clinch county. The tornado moved across US Highway 441 about 9 miles north of Needmore and then lifted quickly a short distance east of the Highway. Damage was due to estimated peak winds of 75 to 85 mph and included several pine trees downed and snapped, a manufactured outhouse smashed, a service station canopy damaged, a RV vehicle flipped over and moved about 15-20 ft and property damage to a hunting RV single wide with part of the tin roof torn off.

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

5 minutes of warning. NWS JAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 17:30 UTC, 5 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 17:45 UTC.

The county was under a tornado watch, issued at 13:37 UTC and running to 19:29 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 16:27 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 Moody AFB radar (KVAX), 35 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 17:35 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 2023 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.