By State › Georgia

Georgia: Risks & Trends

Download all of Georgia as PDF Print

Same standard as every other page on this site: every figure below is independently sourced, and figures that vary across sources, or measure genuinely different things, are flagged as such rather than collapsed into one number that looks more precise than the underlying data actually supports.

The 2008 Atlanta tornado: a rare direct hit on a major downtown

MetricFigure
Peak rating EF2
Deaths, full March 14-15, 2008 outbreak 3 (1 in Atlanta)
Injuries, full outbreak 53
Damage, Atlanta tornado alone ~$500 million
National ranking 13th costliest tornado in U.S. history
Notable structures damaged CNN Center, Georgia Dome

Most damaging tornadoes strike rural or suburban terrain; this one tracked directly through downtown Atlanta’s dense high-rise core, a genuinely unusual event that demonstrated urban tornado risk isn’t purely theoretical.

The 2011 Ringgold-Apison tornado: the deadliest of the largest outbreak on record

MetricFigure
Peak rating EF4
Georgia deaths 24 (including 1 indirect)
Ringgold deaths alone 9
Injuries 335
Economic losses (2024 dollars) $88 million+

Part of the largest tornado outbreak ever recorded

This tornado struck on April 27, 2011, during the April 14-16 and 25-28, 2011 tornado outbreak sequence, the largest tornado outbreak in recorded history across the southeastern and midwestern U.S. It was the single deadliest tornado to hit Georgia during that sequence.

The 2007-2008 drought: Atlanta approaches “Day Zero”

MetricFigure
2007 drought severity ranking Second driest year on record for the region
Share of the region in "exceptional" drought by year end 1/3+
Lake Lanier water level drop ~20 ft below normal, lowest since the lake's construction in the 1950s
Estimated water supply remaining at worst point ~35 days
Counties under Drought Level 4 (total outdoor watering ban) 64
Mandatory reduction ordered from winter-use baseline 10%

Unlike the two tornadoes above, this wasn’t a single dramatic event with a clear before-and-after, it was a slow-building supply crisis that took months to reach its worst point and became the direct trigger for the interstate legal fight covered on the Laws page. Georgia has had 13 long-term severe droughts over the past 325 years, with droughts lasting three or more years occurring roughly once every 40 years on average, making this a recurring risk rather than a one-time event.

What these have in common

Georgia’s tornado risk and its water supply risk operate on completely different timescales, minutes of warning for a tornado, months of accumulating deficit for a drought, but both demonstrate the same practical point: a risk doesn’t need to be exotic to be serious. Ordinary severe weather and ordinary water-supply management, stressed hard enough, both produced genuine crises here within the last two decades.

Sources