The National Weather Service in Jackson has rated the storm the hit just east of Brookhaven this morning an EF2 tornado with maximum winds of 120mph. While the weather today unfolded almost perfectly according to forecast I must say I am a little surprised at the strength of winds with one cell that crossed south Mississippi.

Now
I am not here to argue tornado vs straight line wind damage. Lets face
it, if your home is damaged or destroyed by winds. Who cares if it was
a tornado or not. Strong winds are strong winds!

Anyway the scenario is very interesting. It looks like a mesoscale convective vortex(MCV) formed and then moved across south Mississippi. What is an MCV you ask? Good question. I'll skip the technical "mumbo
jumbo" and get right to it. Basically, you are looking at a small
circular rotation in the atmosphere. This circulation is a smaller part
(mesoscale) of a larger storm. The MCV triggered a line of storms that produced a line of strong winds. At the far northern end of the line where the MCV was located (the comma head) there was probably enough rotation to kick off the strong winds along the path of the MCV.
Damage first started in eastern Adams county with a tree down followed
by the Lincoln county damage. Further to the east strong winds were
reported in Collins and then eastward into Jones county before the MCV weakened.

While not totally unheard of this time of the year. MCV's are more common in the hot weather months.