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

Storm Chasing Dew Style in South Georgia... the Dewvoid is dead!!!

This was written by Alabama Mike to me. All true...

Dew HERSELF witnessed a few wall clouds and a funnel cloud. She reported that to the NWS Tallahassee but they issued no tornado warning as far as I could tell. They dropped the ball by not using her report.

Finally, there is irrefutable scientific evidence that the Dewvoid was a myth and it happened in her own county...

Mike also had a great account of my chase on the team blog from the radar perspective. Awesome, Mike! Thanks! Meso Mike emailed a storm report that was related to the rotating wall cloud I saw:

HAHIRA, GA 3099N 8337W SEVERAL TREES AND POWER LINES WERE DOWN.

Based on that report's lat/long, I might be returning to a powerless house. Anyways, on with my story...

It was my lunch hour, and I asked bf if he would be interested in going out and shooting some lightning on the squall line that was coming through, so we got set up in a decent-sized sod field, well to the east of the approaching squall and waited for the lightning to start flashing, while we ate sandwiches. A few frequent flashes (none of which caught) preceded a heavy downpour with ferocious wind. Luckily, we were chasing in a Jeep (yes, yes, I know I just preached all about how we shouldn't do that... but we did it anyway, so :OP), so when the water covered the dirt road access back to the highway, we just went bogging through that. (Gotta love a Jeep for the off-road chasing opportunities. My minivan would have been stuck there...)






Yes, in south Georgia you get John Deere tractors in your chase pics. It was while we were bogging out of there, headed back to the office that I got the call from Alabama Mike "DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU ARE UNDER A TORNADO WARNING?!" Uh... no! (Remember that I forgot my weather radio today... bad storm chaser) So, a quick about-face and we were chasing a tornado warned cell, where a tornado had been spotted by a trained spotter in the southern part of my county.

CLYATTVILLE, GA ROOF LIFTED OFF HOME ON JOHNSON ROAD . POWER POLES AND TREES SNAPPED.

This is what that area to my south looked like... (where I estimate that cell was) So, bf and I were headed east on Highway 84, trying to get ahead of the tornadic supercell, which we could see to our southwest. We were awaiting the opportunity to make a southward turn for an intercept opportunity. Finally, that chance arrived. We turned south on Highway 129 and headed for some action... but along the way had to stop and take a picture of the doppler radar site that I have come to rely upon. (How cool is that, getting a picture of your actual radar during your chase?!) We were driving steadily south, and we saw the storm was racing along to the east, but appeared to be dissipating. Mike suggested an east turn early on along the way, but my gut told me to keep going south. With the way these storms were flying by, we never would have caught up to that one, and the next one was right behind it, so if we journeyed south... it would come to us, theoretically. Mike seemed to agree with that line of thinking, but soon we came to another east/west decision. Alabama Mike and I talked through options and we jointly decided that we should head west toward a cell that looked powerful with some signs of rotation that was three counties over at that point, and we planned for an intercept in Valdosta up by Highway 84. We were traveling west on Highway 94, racing (not speeding, just hurrying along...;OP) toward a potentially tornadic supercell. Yeehaw! Finally, we hit a perimeter road in Valdosta that cuts from Highway 94 over to Highway 84, but there it was. We were just in time for the main event, so we pulled into the center median on a bridge on that road (where two sheriff's deputies--seperately--stopped with lights to check on us, one asking us to move to a safer viewing spot--deeper into the storm with less visibility... ok, Einstein... I think not!). So, we were watching this monster roll by about 5 miles to the north, when suddenly... this wall cloud descends from the cloud base, beautiful wall cloud, showing definite rotation. I was on the phone with Alabama Mike at the time, and I had to go to call it in to the guys... Spotter duty, don't you know? Parks... who didn't issue a warning... on my trained spotted rotating wall cloud (lol, I wrote eye wall, intially... is it cane season already???). :OP Whatever, Parks! That same cell produced wind damage in Thomasville and in Hahira, probably at the time I was calling it in (more on that to come)... Well, after getting off the phone with Parks, who didn't issue a warning (did I mention that?)...bf and I both saw the funnel drop from it and pop back up. I am still digging through the video, to see if I can find it... (Update: I found that tonight..., and let me say that my video capability on the camera I have stinks big time!!! I am actually about to get one of Rick's reject video cameras, for a great deal, so that should help. Thanks, Rick!) Anyways, as a warning, this video accidentally contained a wordy dird. Sorry, I guess my language gets a little less than PG when faced with exciting weather... It's hard to make out, and I have no editing software (another thing to add to my list) to enhance the sharpness, etc., but I promise, a funnel cloud descended for a few seconds and popped back up and dipped again, before a wall of rain from another approaching cell covered us in a blanket of torrential downpour, and I did not feel comfortable being in that mess because I figured we shouldn't play with rain wrapped rotation, so we headed back east to get ahead of it again, and we were riding parallel with it because when Alabama Mike suggested we turn north, we traveled about 5 miles up a tree covered windy dirt road before we came out RIGHT UNDER a rotating wall cloud!!!! Then, I was trying my hardest to convince bf to turn us around and get us the heck out of there because we were in DANGER!!! He reluctantly did without anything dropping on us... whew.... (we have talked about this, and he said that he promises that the next time we end up under a rotating wall cloud, he will get us out of there faster--he was just excited. lol. At least, we survived to tell about it. Thank God.) and we decided to just let it pass on by so we could both get back to what we needed to be doing... work. Mike indicated that the cell lost its umph, and time was working against us. So we stopped and watched it roll on by... until it started to pour on us, a cold pounding rain. Awesome chase! Great intercept! Off to pain and torture!!!

~Dew