Update April 17: Officials with Hall County Emergency Management and the National Weather Service have determined that a tornado touched down in Hall County during the April 13 storms.
Emergency Management Director Casey Ramsey said in a release sent late Friday that as a result of a survey done Tuesday, officials concluded an EF-1 tornado touched down in the area of Mud Creek Road. The twister had maximum winds of 100 mph and cut a 200-yard-wide path for 14 miles through Hall, Habersham, Banks and Stephens counties.
According to the release, the tornado hit at 2:43 a.m. Monday and lasted 13 minutes.
According to the National Weather Service, damage was mostly limited to trees, but one mobile home was damaged.
Original story: Tiffany Terveen had dreams all night of trees falling. She made her 11-year-old daughter sleep downstairs out of fear of a tree crashing through the upstairs room.
As Terveen was getting ready Monday morning for her day, it finally happened but in the next-door neighbor’s yard.
“I hit the ground and took cover because I thought there was a tree falling on my house,” said Terveen of Cameron Circle in Gainesville.
The tree fell around 8 a.m. Monday, April 13, in a spot similar to where one fell from a storm a few years ago.
Five adults and seven children were displaced from two homes off of River Run Circle in northeast Hall County after several trees fell as strong storms moved through the area overnight.
No one was injured, Hall County Emergency Management reported in the early morning hours Monday.
The American Red Cross was contacted to help with lodging.
Hall County Fire Services Division Chief Zach Brackett said there were five homes countywide struck by trees.
Hall County residents with damage can report it to the county online.
No one particular area was hit hard, Brackett said, as incidents were scattered around the county.
The system moved across the South overnight, with a tornado spotted north of Meridian near the Alabama state line and several tornadoes striking Mississippi.
Around 750,000 people were without power early Monday in a 10-state swath ranging from Texas to Georgia up to West Virginia, according to poweroutages.us. In Hall County, a few thousand were without power in the early hours, and 35 Georgia Power customers were still affected at 5 p.m. Monday.
Jackson EMC reported a handful of customers without power, and Sawnee EMC reported no Hall County outages at 5 p.m. News outlets reported downed trees, flooded streets and other damage in Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia, but the National Weather Service hadn’t immediately confirmed additional tornado touchdowns.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.