Residents across north Florida and south Georgia woke up today to a morning that weather forecasters had been dreading. A fast moving line of severe thunderstorms barreled through the Tallahassee area bringing the threat of tornadoes, damaging winds, and a commute that officials urged people to take with extreme caution if they had to make it at all.
Tallahassee tornado watch went into effect before dawn
The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch at 5:56 a.m. covering 15 counties across the region. The watch extended through 9 a.m. and applied to Franklin, Jefferson, Leon, and Wakulla counties in the Big Bend area of Florida along with Ben Hill, Berrien, Brooks, Colquitt, Cook, Grady, Irwin, Lanier, Lowndes, Thomas, and Tift counties in south Georgia. The list of affected cities included Tallahassee, Valdosta, Thomasville, Moultrie, Tifton, Fitzgerald, Quitman, and dozens of smaller communities scattered across the watch zone.
Severe thunderstorm warnings were also issued for parts of the region including Tallahassee, Crawfordville, and Midway with the potential for winds reaching 60 mph and pea sized hail. Those warnings ran through 8:45 a.m. as the strongest cells in the line pushed across the area.
Forecasters warned that the storm system had already produced damage farther west before reaching the Florida Panhandle. The line began arriving in southeast Alabama around 2 a.m. today and reached the Tallahassee area between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. before continuing its march eastward into the Big Bend and south Georgia. The Storm Prediction Center had placed communities from Dothan and Marianna to Tallahassee and Bainbridge under a Level 2 Slight Risk for severe storms while areas farther east toward Valdosta and Perry sat under a Level 1 Marginal Risk as the system was expected to gradually weaken.
Reports of downed trees and strong wind gusts came in early
By early today morning forecasters had already received multiple reports of trees down across the region along with weather station readings showing wind gusts between 40 and 60 mph. The NWS noted that the storm line had a history of producing damaging winds and possibly a few tornadoes as it tracked through Alabama and Georgia and cautioned that the same pattern was likely to continue for another three to four hours…