High winds, heavy rain and hail swept across Northeast Georgia Tuesday, killing one man and forcing at least one local school system to delay classes on Wednesday.
Winds were the big story with the main line of thunderstorms moving through after sunset. Cornelia reported a peak wind gust of 29.9MPH. A weather station near the start of GA 400 reported a peak gust of 44MPH, and a site in Hall County measured 60MPH.
One man was killed when a tree fell on his home in Jackson County along highway 332 between Braselton and Pendegrass. Countless other downed trees were reported along roadways across the region, and tens of thousands of people were left in the dark. As of 10PM Georgia Power was reporting 171,000 power outages across the state. HEMC outage maps showed 630 of their customer still without power at 11PM, with 503 of those in White County.
Frequent lightning also occurred though as of 11PM there were no reports of any injuries or structure fires from lightning.
The southern part of White County was hit particularly hard with both hail and damaging winds. An early round of hail storms moved repeatedly over the area, covering the ground in many places. Pam Allison captured this video of the storm between Cleveland and Habersham.
White County Fire reported golf-ball sized hail along Highway 75 near the White/Hall County line at 5PM. Drivers were pelted with hail around this time along Hwy. 129 South in White County, forcing many travelers to pull off the road to wait for the storm to pass. Residents in the Westmoreland Road area reported the hail lasting an hour or more.
Further north residents in the Blue Ridge area reported penny to quarter sized hail around 7PM, with countless other reports from around the region throughout the evening hours.
The Lumpkin County School System announced on social media that all of its schools will operate on a 2 hour delay Wednesday due to storm damage and power outages. Drying conditions Wednesday should leave plenty of clean up time.
Check out some pictures and video from around the area below. 
Joanna Glade sent us this video of hail falling in Southern White County.
Dean Dyer of WRWH Radio contributed to this report
Feature photo of Highway 129 by Beverly Penland
