Georgia weather station records 129 mph gust near apparent tornado
A damaged weather station struck by an apparent tornado in Bryomville, Ga. on April 6, 2022. (Photo courtesy: Gene Roney)
BYROMVILLE, Ga. - A weather station in Georgia may have recorded a state-record wind gust after it took a direct or near-direct hit from a tornado during Tuesday's severe weather outbreak.
The University of Georgia Weather Network station near Byromville recorded a gust of 129.3 mph at 3:26 p.m.; at the same time, it registered a temperature of -146F, suggesting the thermometer sensor had broken.
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"My first thought was that it must have been an instrument failure, but temperature and wind are measured using different instruments, so that did not make sense," Pam Knox, the director of the UGA Weather Network, wrote in a blog post shortly after the event. "Some further digging showed that the temperature sensor failed at the same time that the peak wind gust occurred, and the air pressure also spiked low at the same time."
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service in Atlanta had just posted a storm report denoting a possible tornado about 1/4 mile north of the weather station.
More evidence of a tornado hit surfaced later when the farm owner where the weather station sits posted photos of apparent tornado damage on the property, including a destroyed barn. Debris was strewn around the station as well.
UGA survey teams are heading to the site Thursday to check up on the station and the surrounding damage.
"Perhaps the 129.3 mph wind gust was no error but a pinpoint measurement of a tornado!" Knox wrote.
It could be among the highest wind speeds ever reliably recorded in Georgia if confirmed. Knox says they will submit their findings to NOAA's State Climate Extremes Committee which will pore over the data and decide whether to accept the measurement as valid and if so, make it an official record.
Knox says she suspects the previous top gust in the state would be the 115 mph gust one of her stations measured in Donalsonville during Hurricane Michael, but that data was never submitted to NOAA's panel.
The NOAA panel recently accepted a measured gust of 120.1 mph near Princeton, Kentucky during the deadly tornado in December as a state record, and also validated Hanford, Washington's 120-degree reading during last June's historic heat wave across the west as the hottest temperature ever recorded in Washington.