Spring's arrival brings threat of tornadoes to north Georgia

GAINESVILLE - The arrival of spring on Wednesday brings with it the threat of tornadoes in Georgia, where cold fronts from the north often collide with warm moist air this time of year. <br> <br> About 41 percent of the documented twisters between 1884 and 2000 touched down during March and April. <br> <br> Among them was the deadliest tornado in state history, an April 1936 storm that leveled downtown Gainesville, killing 203 people and injuring 1,600. <br> <br> Eighteen died, half of them in Pickens County, and 200 were injured when Palm Sunday twisters swept across north Georgia in 1994. <br> <br> And four years ago, on March 20, 1998, a tornado just north of Gainesville killed 13 and injured 100 others. <br> <br> ``I&#39;ve been very observant of the weather, and the last couple of days, they&#39;ve been so warm - just like it was then,&#39;&#39; said Hazel Dover, whose family&#39;s poultry farm was ravaged by the storm that struck just hours before the vernal equinox, the beginning of spring. <br> <br> History has made Hall County residents more in tune with the weather, said Mike Satterfield, the county&#39;s fire chief and emergency management director. <br> <br> ``There is a paranoia around here, and I think that&#39;s natural,&#39;&#39; Satterfield said. <br> <br> Last week, Hall County became the 18th county in the state to be certified by the National Weather Service as being Storm Ready, said Lans Rothfusz, the meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service in Peachtree City. <br> <br> The certification is an attempt by the weather service to raise the standard of severe weather warnings. It requires that counties have the ability to monitor weather alerts 24 hours a day, be able to warn the public regardless of the time of day, have backup communication plans, and a network of trained weather spotters, usually amateur radio operators, to help pinpoint danger. <br> <br> State Climatologist David Stooksbury, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Georgia, said the ingredients for severe whether are heightened in the spring, and to a lesser extent in autumn. <br> <br> In addition to the cold fronts mixing with warm, moist air, upper level winds also tend to allow the resulting storms to rotate, further encouraging tornadoes to develop, Stooksbury said. <br> <br> For March and April, the result is sometimes catastrophic. By June, the number of tornadoes is usually one-third that of April, when about 300 twisters have been reported in Georgia from 1884 through 2000, according to the weather service. <br> <br> Stooksbury said that being in a county with fewer documented tornadoes does not necessarily make the area safer because the storms are probably more evenly distributed than statistics suggest. <br> <br> ``Where there are no people,&#39;&#39; he said, ``there are no reports.&#34;