One person was killed and nine were hospitalized for minor injuries, state emergency management officials said. Residents said no traces remained of some roadside produce stands, which are a common sight on rural Georgia's back roads.
One other death was reported in Tennessee after an uprooted tree fell onto a storage shed where a man had taken shelter.
In Adairsville, the debris in one yard showed just how dangerous the storm had been: A bathtub, table, rolls of toilet paper and lumber lay in the grass next to what appeared to be a roof. Sheets of metal dangled from a large tree like ornaments.
"The sky was swirling," said Theresa Chitwood, who owns the Adairsville Travel Plaza. She said she went outside to move her car because she thought it was going to hail. Instead, the passing storm decimated a building behind the travel plaza.
"It sounded like a freight train coming through," she said. "It looks like a bomb hit it."
Powerful winds ripped through the entire region, with gusts powerful enough to topple tractor-trailers in several places.
In Adairsville, several were flipped on their side in the lot of the travel plaza. Danny Odum and Rocky Depauw, both truckers from Marion, Ill., had stopped for breakfast when the suspected tornado hit.
After it passed, Odum said he went outside to find his truck that was hauling diapers on its side with his dog Simon, a Boston terrier, still inside. Simon was scared but otherwise fine.
The deaths reported Wednesday ended the nation's longest break between tornado fatalities since detailed tornado records began being kept in 1950, according to the Storm Prediction Center and National Climatic Data Center. The last one was June 24, when a person was killed in a home in Highlands County, Fla. That was 220 days ago as of Tuesday.
