Tornadoes possible again Sunday night as cold front hits Georgia
Another round of severe weather may lash parts of Middle Georgia with powerful winds, downpours and possible tornadoes as a cold front swoops in overnight Sunday.
The forecast storms come on the heels of last Sunday night’s tornadoes and fierce gusts, which snapped trees, rattled homes and knocked out power across the region.
While the potential exists for another round of tornadoes, the twisters aren’t expected to pack as much punch this time around.
“The event shaping up for this Sunday, it’s similar but it’s not identical,” Katie Martin, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Peachtree City post, said Friday. “We’re not anticipating right now there being the higher-end tornadoes.”
Tornadoes whisked up this weekend would in all likelihood be brief, Martin said.
“We call them spin-up tornadoes. ... They often are not as strong and not as long-lived,” she said.
The foul weather expected late Sunday and possibly lasting into mid-morning on Monday may pack more of what are known as straight-line winds — potentially-damaging torrents of air hurled groundward from thunderstorms.
Forecasters this weekend are calling for an “enhanced risk” of severe thunderstorms for much of the state south of Interstate 20, which includes Macon, Warner Robins and all of Middle Georgia.
“If you could think of the scale kind of maxing out at five, with five being the most widespread, severe event we could possibly forecast, an ‘enhanced risk’ would be a three out of five,” Martin said. “For context, portions of the area last weekend were at a four out of five.”