National Weather Service looks for possible tornado damage in Albany, Worth County

Folks around Albany believe a tornado came through Monday night and meteorologists are on their way to find out.

Several hundred homes are damaged across Dougherty County, roads are blocked by debris and thousands of people lost electricity in the severe storms, Albany-Dougherty County deputy EMA director Sebon Burns said Wednesday.

A survey team from the National Weather Service in Tallahassee, Florida, plans to visit Albany and possibly Worth County to inspect damage Wednesday, and possibly Thursday.

“We have a large area of straight line winds that went across the same area,” said Parks Camp, a weather service meteorologist. “It’s a matter of weeding through all the straight line wind damage to see if there are any tornado tracks embedded in there.”

Debbie Rosier, who works for the Albany-Dougherty County Fire Department, said she was in bed when she got a call from her neighbor about the tornado warning at about 10:30 p.m. Monday.

All was quiet, so she lit a cigarette at her home near the border of Dougherty and Worth counties.

A frantic text came from the neighbor: “Get in your closet, now!”

Rosier doused the cigarette in some water and headed for cover.

“Behind the house you could hear a roar,” Rosier said. “I don’t know if it was the straight line winds, or what. All I knew was ‘get in the closet, now.’ ”

A few things blew around in her backyard, but nothing moved on her front porch.

Burns said as many as 1,000 homes sustained some damage, but he was not aware of any buildings being destroyed.

Relief efforts are focusing on clearing highways and restoring electricity as crews determine whether a twister touched down.

In Mitchell County, weather service survey teams determined an EF-1 tornado with peak winds of 95 mph touched down two miles north of Baconton just before 10:10 p.m. Monday.

It traveled about four miles before lifting about three miles to the southeast of Putney.

Dozens of pecan trees were uprooted and roofs were damaged on several mobile homes off Stage Coach Road.

Another tornado was confirmed across the border near Malvern in Geneva County, Alabama.

The EF-2 twister traveled more than 7.5 miles.

It’s blamed for damaging buildings, snapping and uprooting trees.

The National Weather Service reports the same line of storms is blamed for four deaths near Rehobeth, Alabama.

A large tree split a mobile home, killing four people.

To the northeast of Albany, 80 mph winds were clocked northwest of Ashburn in Turner County, where another person died as trees fell on mobile homes.

A church steeple toppled, and shingles were ripped from roofs.

This story was originally published January 4, 2017 at 12:03 PM with the headline "National Weather Service looks for possible tornado damage in Albany, Worth County."