Tornado in Thomasville, Georgia rated an EF2

As I mentioned in my previous post covering the Boston, Georgia EF3 tornado that occurred in the wee hours of February 19, 2009, the same cell that we hid from behind a mattress that night, no video or photography can fully prepare you for the human side of a devastating weather event. At least in Boston, the isolated families that were impacted were "spared"... their living structures are still inhabitable. They had insurance to cover damages. They were ok. Nothing, though, can fully prepare you for seeing it first-hand. As I looked around at the faces of the families in Thomasville, expressions of wonderment... confusion... fear... trauma... in a scene of total mayhem in a modular home community, power and cable crews were working hard trying to restore power amidst a web of fallen lines and snapped trees. People whose only place to go, has been destroyed, condemned, totally unfit, unsafe, unihabitable. You could see the complete feeling of helplessness, even as the Red Cross disaster services truck stopped to offer what they could... you got any hope in the back of that truck??? The overwhelming appearance of the scene is staggering. God truly did lift a hand of protection on behalf of these people. This is my summary of the damage as I saw it in Thomasville and the impact of this storm on the people in its wake of destruction. No deaths were reported as a 100-400 yard EF2 tornado attacked a path 16.5 miles long. As I mentioned in the previous post, Rick, Meso Mike (who doesn't keep up his blog) and I went into Thomas county Saturday afternoon to survey the damage in both Boston, GA and Thomasville, GA. That's right, the south Georgia members of the Southern Weather Brigade met Saturday afternoon in Quitman and rode together to Boston for damage assessment(described in the post below), then on to Thomasville. Although, Boston was the larger, more powerful tornado, Thomasville was the more populated area, and the scene there was one of total mayhem. First, we traveled through several neighborhoods, with a few areas significant tree debris and roof destruction. This is the area we covered... briefly.Basically, we came in on 84, headed south on 19, headed west on Old Monticello Road, west on Pine Tree Blvd (note the name there) to 319, noticed Metcalf Road was blocked to traffic, and we headed on down to the modular home neighborhood on Baytree Drive, where the were police standing guard at the entrance to the neighborhood, but since Rick told them "we were with the Southern Weather Brigade here to do some video and photography for damage assessment," we were waved through. Easy as that. It was in this neighborhood that things seemed most dismal... the families were gathered outside with blank stares on their faces, probably so overwhelmed that they were not sure where to start. Really, it looks like the tornado mostly bounced over their neighborhood, only touching down for a moment, but in those moments, it wreaked havoc, like you wouldn't believe, traveling first between two of the structures, then traveling behind several of the homes, ...blowing out the back side of one,... ripping it off its foundation, and tearing the roof off another and splitting it down the middle while pushing it off of its foundation, rendering them both uninhabitable. The owners appeared to be removing all their belongings from one of the houses. Across the street, a large group was gathered in front of a house, where it appears the tornado left the neighborhood, taking with it their roof and leaving a tree in their home.
There were work crews everywhere, which was encouraging. The American Red Cross had dispatched their Disaster Services vehicle offering assistance to those impacted. There was a significant amount of damaged, and from what I saw, at least 3 homes were destroyed.

We left that neighborhood and drive toward Metcalf Rd., but the police officer posted there was doing a good job of barricading that road, so we went back down Pine Tree Blvd toward Magnolia Road and drove south. We turned in on Crestwood Drive and drove through a neighborhood full of debris and work trucks. It looks like for the most part, the tornado ran parallel with the backs of those houses and tore of the back of one two story house, when it turned into the neighborhood, but besides some trees down, seemed to just skirt the rooves.

IT IS ESTIMATED THAT OVER 95 PERCENT OF THE PINE TREES IN THE PATH OF THE TORNADO WERE SNAPPED.

We were not able to get onto Metcalf Road, I would imagine from the number of trees being moved...

NEAR METCALF ROAD AND MOVED TOWARD THE SOUTHWEST GEORGIA STATE HOSPITAL LOCATED JUST SOUTH OF PINE TREE BLVD. THE TORNADO SNAPPED MANY PINE TREES ALONG THE PATH THROUGH THIS AREA AND EVEN REMOVED TWO AIR CONDITIONING UNITS FROM THE ROOF OF ONE OF THE BUILDINGS WITHIN THE HOSPITAL COMPLEX. PATH WIDTH OF THE TORNADO AT THIS POINT IS ESTIMATED TO BE NEAR 200 YARDS WITH A MAXIMUM INTENSITY OF 105 MPH...WHICH IS STILL WITHIN THE EF-1 CATEGORY.

It appears they were fortunate not to have experienced the power and size of the the tornado in Boston, there in the residential area of Thomasville.

The report for the storm cell is linked here. As a storm chaser, I am passinate about weather. I am curious to learn as much as I possibly can, but it absolutely tore my heart to see the devastation. I have expressed many times that I hate night time events. God's hand was in this saving lives, but it could have been horrible.

Incidentally, this area was under a severe thunderstorm watch at the time of the tornado. Fortunately, the National Weather Service was very much on the ball and had issued a tornado warning. God bless all of these folks in their recovery.

Incidentally, the tornado reports from February 18th(actually ours was on the 19th, but...) increased drastically since first posting to a total of 21 tornadoes, including an EF4.

~Dew