HELEN — National Weather Service officials say Saturday night’s storm damage at Top of Georgia Airstream Park north of Helen was caused by a tornado.
That White County tornado was confirmed Wednesday as an EF1 tornado, said White County Public Safety Director David Murphy.
“The National Weather Service came up and did their field observations on the storm that occurred on Saturday and to just take a look at the damage to determine whether or not if it was a tornado or high winds, or a downburst that usually occurs in a thunderstorm,” Murphy said Wednesday afternoon.
An EF1 tornado is the second weakest in the EF0 to EF5 ranking scaling, bearing winds of 86 to 110 mph.
The damage occurred shortly after 9:30 p.m., as a line of severe thunderstorms moved across North Georgia. Several maintenance buildings at the park were damaged or destroyed, and numerous trees and power lines were downed as a result.
“Not only did they look at the damage there, they went back and reviewed radar data, and radar actually out of Greenville, S.C., picked up the tornado on radar,” Murphy said. “So they were able to look at the damage, look at what the radar was seeing in that particular area and determine that it was a tornado.”
