1 dead after severe storms rip through Georgia

Courtney Travis
·2 min read

Severe weather produced a deadly and damaging start to meteorological spring in the Atlanta area.

From Sunday afternoon through early Monday, which marked the start of meteorological spring, downpours and strong thunderstorms erupted across parts of the Tennessee Valley and the Southeast. More than two dozen wind damage reports came in across the states of Arkansas, Tennessee, northern Mississippi and Alabama, and Georgia.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP

Early Monday, a severe storm moving through northern Georgia spawned a tornado around 6 a.m. EST.

The damage was surveyed by the National Weather Service on Monday afternoon, which confirmed the tornado as an EF1 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. Peak wind gusts of 90 mph were estimated based on the tree damage found in the Riverdale area, 13 miles south of Atlanta.

Channel 2 in Atlanta also reported that at least four homes had been damaged from fallen trees, according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.

Despite the damage, no injuries or fatalities were reported from the tornado. However, strong wind gusts caused tree branches to crash down nearby, which led to one fatality in the metro Atlanta area.

The victim was 65-year-old Harvey Hillman, who had walked out to his truck to go to work early in the morning during the storm. He was fatally struck in the head when a tree fell on his vehicle in Riverdale, Georgia. His family heard the crash and found him unresponsive on the ground, according to the Clayton County Police Department.

A large tree fell on a car in Riverdale, Georgia, early Monday morning, killing the driver. (Facebook / Clayton County Police Department).

The tree damage also caused power outages across the region.

AccuWeather released its annual severe weather and tornado forecast for the United States in February. Forecasters warned of a higher-than-normal severe thunderstorm risk across portions of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys this year.

Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier, Spectrum, Fubo, and Verizon Fios.