DALTON, Ga. — An official from the National Weather Service confirmed a low-intensity tornado formed in Whitfield County during Wednesday morning’s storms that toppled numerous trees and left some residents without power temporarily throughout northwest Georgia.

A line of wind damage ran from Waring Road and traveled north-northeast across Pleasant Hill Drive, Cleveland Highway, Orchard Way and across to Pleasant Grove Drive in Whitfield County.

David Nadler, warning coordination meteorologist with the Peachtree City office of the National Weather Service, said the tornado was localized near the Lynn Drive area between Cleveland Highway and Pleasant Grove Drive.

“Most of the damage we have seen has been trees snapped or uprooted,” Nadler said. “Right in here (Lynn Drive) is probably where we have seen the highest concentration of trees down. Some of them have been snapped, larger trees have been snapped close to the base and this would indicate a pretty good amount of wind.”

Nadler and colleague Carly Kovacik toured the damaged areas Thursday afternoon with Whitfield County Emergency Management Agency Director Claude Craig. Nadler said the pair would be going to other locations in Gordon, Murray, Gilmer and Fannin counties on Thursday and Friday.

On the Enhanced Fujita tornado damage scale which ranks storms on a scale of 0 to 5, Nadler said the evidence he is seeing on the ground would be consistent with a high end EF0 or a low EF1 with top wind speeds of 80 to 90 miles per hour. And while there was heavy tree damage in the area, Nadler said there are indications the tornado perhaps never touched the ground.

“We are not seeing a lot of structural damage with the homes themselves,” Nadler said. “So that would indicate that whatever this was coming across may have not been entirely on the ground. It may have been more aloft. But it was enough to really rip up the trees and you can see them snapped about halfway down. It is a good thing that the houses are one-story ranch-style homes, kind of low enough to the ground where maybe they didn’t get the full force of the wind while it was blowing through.”

North Georgia Electric Membership Corp., Georgia Power and Dalton Utilities reported Thursday that power to all customers affected by storm-related power outages had been restored.

A North Georgia EMC spokesman said Wednesday that more than 2,000 customers were affected by power outages in the company’s seven-county service area.