Strong front passing through GA/SC today(5 Mar 25)

The strong front passing through the US will trek across coastal Georgia and the Lowcountry of South Carolina this morning. TLDR: some gusty winds, a quick thunderstorm as the races through. Some potential for a brief weak tornado so keep your weather radio on just in case. As of just after 5am it looks like this:

Zooming in a bit we can see that it is a very sharp line of storms, at 5:15 just past Macon, near Dublin …

Looking at lightning, that is all concentrated to the south (the yellow dots).

And looking at rotation, there is some near Tallahassee and far Southwest Georgia, but at the moment no warnings. There is a tornado watch for that area, but nothing near the coast as of yet, which is under a severe thunderstorm watch.

So what to expect? The biggest hazard today will probably be gusty winds. As of 5:30am it is really starting to pick up. With winds gusting to between 35 and 40mph there may be some branches come down and maybe a scattered power glitch, but this is just typical spring storm kinds of impacts. Anyone saying “gusts to tropical storm force” is fear mongering.

The line of thunderstorms defining the front, known as a Quasi-Linear Convective System or QLCS if you want to impress your friends, should reach the Statesboro area around 8 to 9am, enter Chatham between 9 and 10, the Frogmore/Beaufort area by noon, and be clear of the GA coast and over Charleston between 1 and 2pm. Here is the High Resolution Rapid Refresh model simulated radar at 9,10,11, and noon; click any image to embiggen.

By 3pm all of the worst should be completely clear of the coast, leaving only scattered light showers.

While it’s not anything to get terribly worried about, there is some potential for a weak tornado. So you should know what to do. If you hear an alert, know where the nearest safe location is – typically an interior room without windows. Normally today would be the siren test day. Hopefully the various counties are smart enough not to run the noon test, but this is Georgia 😛 … as always by far your best bet is to have a weather radio and keep it on during these kinds of events; you can’t completely trust sirens, apps, or phone warnings.