A EF-0 tornado touched down in south Houston County

The National Weather Service released preliminary findings that an EF-0 tornado with winds up to 80 mph touched down on Elko Road in south Houston County just north of Unadilla early Monday morning, damaging trees.

The damage to the area was fairly concentrated and was on the ground for about a quarter-mile. It was a relatively small tornado as it was only on the east side of the road but was on the high end of an EF-0 on the level on the Enhanced Fujita Scale as the wind speeds reached 80 mph.

It becomes an EF-1 at 85 mph, National Weather Service Meteorologist Matt Sena told The Telegraph on Monday.

“The path is about a mile south, southwest of Elko and the end location is about three and half miles from Unadilla,” Sena said. “It was not really in a town itself.”

The tornado came from a system of storms that moved through the Southeast on Sunday evening and into Monday morning. The weather was originally projected to hit Middle Georgia directly but the warm front did not move far enough north to bring much more than heavy rain to the area, Sena said.

“It (warm front) lingered south of the area,” Sena said. “It kind of kept the bulk of what we were expecting or what could have happened south for quite awhile.”

The tornado is the second in Middle Georgia in the past week after an EF-1 damaged buildings in North Macon last Monday.