Friday, May 9, 2003
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Friday, May 9, 2003 |
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How bad was it? Even the stormwatchers took cover By J. FRANK LYNCH
Whether or not Wednesday night's destructive weather can officially be named a tornado won't be known until officials from the National Weather Service office can analyze all the data. Tornado or not, the fierce storm was scary enough to shut down the NWS forecast center in Peachtree City, which manages weather information for the entire North Georgia region. Von Woods, a meteorologist at the NOAA center near Falcon Field, confirmed a report that the entire staff took shelter for about 10 minutes at the height of the storm in a "safe area," a room in the center of the building designed for that purpose. Transmissions of alerts, news, forecasts and the like were briefly transferred to the NWS office in Birmingham, but Woods said the Peachtree City office was "offline" no longer than 10 minutes. Woods said that in all likelihood, the powerful storm that swept in from Alabama around supper time Wednesday was not a tornado, even though some Coweta County residents reported seeing a funnel cloud. Meteorologists were set to go up in an airplane Thursday afternoon to check the damage. Woods said seeing the path of the storm and the kind of destruction it wrought often helps determine what kind of storm it was. Woods said it is hard to determine the full power or strength of a storm, even using measurable factors like rainfall or barometric pressure, because the National Weather Service categorizes them by the amount of destruction they cause, not how powerful they are. One good result of the storm: The metro Atlanta area is now shows a rainfall surplus, after years of registering shortages. The storm dumped 2.39 inches of rain on Peachtree City during a 24-hour period ending at midnight Thursday. For the year, rainfall totals 21.07 inches almost 1.5 inches above average. The Fayette and Coweta areas remained under a flood watch Thursday afternoon, meaning the potential for more localizes flooding of creeks and streams was a possibility. The forecast for the weekend calls for warm, humid days with highs in the 80s, and mostly clear nights with lows in the 60s.
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