Severe storms rolled through the metro area Wednesday afternoon, bringing heavy rains and winds blamed on one death.
Most of Georgia remains under a tornado watch until 7 p.m., but the hardest storms should be over, Channel 2 Action News meteorologists said Wednesday afternoon.
In southern Forsyth County, a man died shortly after 2 p.m. when a tree landed on an SUV, crushing the cab, police said. The identity of the person killed was not immediately available.
One of the hardest hit areas in the state was Harris County, north of Columbus. Officials in Harris County reported numerous trees down and some roofs torn off of buildings. The National Weather Service reported "widespread" damage in the town of Hamilton, including damage to Harris County High School. There were also reports of injuries in the county from storms that moved into Georgia after spawning possible tornadoes in Auburn, Ala.
Several counties north of Macon remained under tornado warnings just before 3 p.m.
Paulding, Cobb, Cherokee, Fulton, Gwinnett and DeKalb counties were all under tornado warnings earlier in the afternoon.
The Weather Service said penny-size hail was reported in Woodstock as the storms passed through southern Cherokee County. The storms downed several trees in the Marietta and Smyrna areas.
While the rain had ended and the sun was shining in Cobb County at 2:45 p.m., a narrow area of rain and storms was moving through Alabama and could bring another round of rain to metro Atlanta in time for the evening commute. Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Glenn Burns said that the atmosphere had stabilized behind the afternoon's earlier storms, and would likely keep that second line of storms from becoming severe.
The Weather Service said Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Clayton, Henry, Fayette, Forsyth, Hall, Carroll, Coweta, Spalding and Cherokee were among the counties in North Georgia under the watch.
Area schools were monitoring the severe weather but had not canceled any classes.
Matt Nagel, spokesman for Georgia Tech, said about 2 p.m., “We do have our sirens going … to alert students there’s severe weather in the area. We’ve been using our social media channels to keep people alerted.”
No classes have been canceled, Nagel said.
Georgia Power was reporting about 300 metro Atlanta customers without electricity, mostly in Smyrna and south Fulton County.
Thursday and Friday will be sunny but cooler, with highs in the 50s and overnight lows in the mid-30s, Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Karen Minton said. Her outlook for the weekend calls for sunny skies and warmer temperatures, with highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s.
Rainfall totals from the overnight showers and thunderstorms were heaviest on the northside, where just over an inch was recorded in Kennesaw. Other overnight rain tallies included .97 inch in Marietta, .93 inch in Dunwoody, .78 inch near Mableton and .35 inch at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, where the rainfall deficit for the year currently stands at 10.51 inches.
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