ATLANTA — A tornado watch has been canceled for metro Atlanta after a few western counties got a glimpse of potentially deadly weather last night. Severe Weather Team 2 says the rain is moving out, but another wave of heavy storms is coming Tuesday night.
In anticipation of the storms, Governor Nathan Deal declared a state of emergency Monday night.
The National Weather Service issued a flood watch until Wednesday night.
"Our number one concern, beside from the tornado threat, is widespread flooding," chief meteorologist Glenn Burns said.
Burns tracked storms into the night. He said the northwest corner of the state faced a moderate risk of tornadoes, about 15 percent. There was also a risk of high winds and rain which could bring power outages and flooding, Burns said.
Burns and meteorologist Brad Nitz tracked weather overnight before handing off in the morning to meteorologists David Chandley and Karen Minton on Channel 2 Action News starting at 4 a.m.
A brief series of thunderstorms brought a possible tornado to Troup and Heard counties on Monday evening.
Several Channel 2 Action News viewers sent video of a funnel cloud just west of Hogansville.
Emergency officials told Channel 2's Carl Willis that five to 10 homes were damaged by fallen trees and storm debris. Crews worked into the night to restore power to the area.
"We have four broken poles down the road," said Steve Rhodes with Diverse Power. "We'll be here into the morning."
Deputy Stewart Smith said a storm cell worked its way northeast on Highway 27 leaving a path of destruction.
Robert Graham said he was traveling south on the highway at the time.
"I saw a spiral touching the ground," Graham said.
He snapped several pictures and described to Willis what he saw.
"It was starting to rotate slightly, it wasn't rotating much but I noticed it was a low hanging cloud," he said. "I noticed a little bit of it off to my side started to touch the ground and then the wind was really fierce."
Officials with the Georgia Emergency Management Agency met in the state operations center to monitor the weather. Their main focus will be keeping the roads for emergency vehicles in the morning.
The storm is the same system that brought deadly tornadoes to Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama. It's the extensive damage in those states that Deal said led him to make a declaration for all of Georgia.
"At this juncture, we've declared the emergency for the entire state because it's impossible to pinpoint where the weather will hit," Deal said. "Georgia is threatened perhaps into Wednesday. We're prepared now and we'll be ready for recovery should we, God forbid, experience tornado damage or flooding."
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