Storms trigger six tornado warnings across North Georgia; damage surveys begin

A line of severe storms, known a mesoscale convective system (MCS), brought widespread damaging winds on Tuesday evening to North Georgia.

As of 7 p.m. Tuesday, no tornado damage had been confirmed across North Georgia. Despite several tornado warnings, it appears all rotation stayed elevated. However, National Weather Service employees will be going over data and conducting any necessary surveys.

So far, the Greenville National Weather Service has only confirmed an instance of 75 m.p.h. straight line winds in Catawba County, North Carolina. The NWS in Peachtree City is looking into wind damage from a potential tornado in Towns County off Highway 76 on Adkins Lane, as well as some damage near Jasper.

Locally, stations across Northeast Georgia recorded wind gusts of 30-40 m.p.h. The Cornelia Fire Station recorded a gust of 64 m.p.h., but this instance was isolated and has not been corroborated with any other nearby stations.

The Toccoa Airport recorded a gust of 31 m.p.h. with the storms, and the Gainesville airport recorded a gust of 39 m.p.h.

These winds were strong enough to result in hundreds of downed trees across Rabun, Towns, Union, Fannin, Gilmer, Lumpkin, White, Dawson, Hall, Habersham and Stephens Counties. In Jasper, a monument was struck by lightning and widespread flash flooding occurred around Ellijay. The image below shows all official wind damage reports from the Storm Prediction Center, although there were countless more trees down not counted in these reports.

After some initial storms earlier in the afternoon, the bulk of the storms moved into the region from 8 p.m. onward. The radar below shows the progression of the line across North Georgia from 7:30 p.m. through 10:45 p.m. There were 6 tornado warnings in total with 20 severe thunderstorm warnings issued across North Georgia.

We’ll update with any additional information as the NWS continues to assess the damage across the region.