Alabama tornado ripped billboard from atop its pole and carried it 20 MILES into GEORGIA | Daily Mail Online
A tornado which tore through parts of Alabama, killing at least 23 people, was so powerful it ripped a billboard from its display and carried it 20 miles into a different state.
The billboard, which initially stood atop a pole just north of Smiths Station, Alabama, was torn from its spot and sent airborne.
The huge sign was then carried 20 miles from U.S. Route 280, landing in Harris County, Georgia.
The billboard is an advertisement for the Lee County Flea Market.
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The tornadoes, spawned by a late-winter 'supercell' thunderstorm, ripped through Lee County on Sunday with cyclonic winds of up to 170 miles per hour, at step four of the six-step Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale of tornado strength.
Mobile homes were tossed on their sides and ripped open, their contents strewn over a ravaged landscape littered with debris and gnarled, uprooted trees.
In some places, shreds of houses hung from the limbs of the few trees left standing.
'It looks almost as if someone took a giant knife and just scraped the ground. There are slabs where homes formerly stood, debris everywhere, trees are snapped,' Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones told a morning news conference.
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