With Atlanta weather, you just never know. So it pays to be cautious, even if that means hunkering down only to see a storm forecast fizzle.
That’s about what happened Monday afternoon when a much-feared tempest that included a tornado warning blew over by rush hour after doing little harm.
Isolated power outages, pea-sized hail and downed trees were reported. But based on initial indications there were no injuries, no reports of flooding and no widespread property damage.
Parts of North Georgia, including metro Atlanta, were under a tornado warning for a few hours Monday afternoon, and people took the matter seriously. Employees hid in office building stairwells and school districts held students and buses beyond normal dismissal times.
At 2:20 p.m., a tornado warning was issued for Cobb, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Fulton and Forsyth counties, meaning a possible tornado had been spotted or detected by radar.
Residents in the five counties were urged to move to a safe place until the warning was expected to end about a half-hour later.
The storm moved east from Marietta toward Roswell, Sandy Springs and Peachtree Corners, with some hail damage reported.
Cobb County got the “all clear” just minutes later, but people in Dunwoody were warned to “seek shelter immediately” at 2:26, and there was a “very real threat of a tornado” in the area, according to Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Brad Nitz.
The storm knocked out power in Dunwoody at the offices of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other buildings. There were about 2,500 total outages in the north metro area, including north Fulton, north DeKalb and Gwinnett, said Georgia Power spokesperson Amy Fink.
In a sign of just how fast the storm was moving, and just how unpredictable it would turn out to be, the tornado warning for DeKalb was lifted by 2:33.
Other parts of the metro soon had their chance to worry. Almost by the minute, it seemed another community was being warned to seek shelter fast, and parts of Barrow, Hall and Jackson counties were added to the warning list.
The storm continued moving with fury to the northeast as blinding, heavy rain and hail were reported. The number of metro counties under warning continued to dwindle though, and the storm eventually passed out of the metro area. At 4 p.m., the tornado warning expired, with no touchdowns reported.
A tornado watch was kept in place until 8 p.m. for 27 North Georgia counties, including those in metro Atlanta. But it appeared that the storm had been weathered, this time.
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