EF1 tornado, Bristol, Georgia, January 4, 2023

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

January 4, 2023

Touchdown

1:09 PM EST (18:09 UTC)

Lifted

1:12 PM EST (18:12 UTC)

On the ground

3 minutes

Path length

3.2 miles (5.1 km)

Path width

200 yards (183 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

County

Pierce County

Touchdown point

31.407, -82.281

Lift-off point

31.425, -82.231

Record number

2301041209-01

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 EF1. The highest wind the damage implies is 90 mph.

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 moved across the county in the early afternoon and produced an EF1 tornado with peak winds between 80-90 mph. The tornado touched down just west of Dogwood Road and traveled northeast toward the southside part of Bristol while weakening to EF0 intensity. The tornado lifted before approaching GA Highway 121. Damaged included many downed trees, some of which were snapped near the base and other were uprooted. The tornado toppled a small water and and produced heavy damage to farm outbuildings near Dogwood Road. A farming irrigation system was overturned in the Dogwood Road area. The tornado traveled northeast to east with sporadic damage moving across Crump Lane. Additional damage was noted around Tabby Road, just south of the intersection of Blalock Road and Tabby Road.

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

7 minutes of warning. NWS JAX issued a tornado warning for this county at 18:02 UTC, 7 minutes before the tornado touched down, in force until 18:20 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), 92 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 18:09 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.