Claiming our fame: Gainesville, Georgia's incredible tornado history in maps and photographs

Gainesville is a city of approximately 35,000 residents located in Hall County in northeastern Georgia. While Georgia is typically not included in the traditional portrayal of “Tornado Alley,” its history with tornadoes is quite remarkable and not well known. Gainesville is where both the 5th and 16th deadliest single tornadoes in U.S. history occurred as well as the most tornado fatalities in a single building. These two events as well as a few more recent strong tornado events will be analyzed. The purpose of this presentation is to illustrate just how amazing the tornado history of this town is, and to document some of the important events using GIS technology to reconstruct tornado paths and historical photographs from existing archives to display the aftermath of these disasters.

This presentation uses existing digital archives from the Digital Library of Georgia and other online resources for photograph documentation of the disasters. Spatial information from historical accounts of the events provides the data for mapping the tornado paths. Finally, NCEP Reanalysis data from the dates of the tornado disasters reveals the conditions that can produce tornadic thunderstorms in northeast Georgia.