2011-04-27 MISC: AL,TN,MS,KY,OH,IN,WV,GA

[LucasMarcomini]

In my opinion the tornado reached it max strength before arriving in Birmingham, and right over Pleasant Grove. I snaped a GR2 image of the storm at that time

 

[Jason Harris]

It's probably not fair to jump on Greg Forbes here; he didn't go so far as to say "they've never seen this sort of destruction before"--just that he thought the breadth of the high-end damage from the aerial survey seemed to be the widest he'd seen. If somebody can pull up a transcript you could see the exact words. I don't know if there's a clip online available--did a quick search, but only found some allusions to how he speculated there was EF-5 damage. Also, I see on facebook he has posted the following, which puts what he saw on par with other views:

--

Dr. Greg Forbes
I've been out on a helicpoter tour of the damage near Tuscaloosa, AL. It's as bad as I've ever seen. Numerous locations with buildings levelled. I'm sure that's the case in many communities in what is surely one of the worst tornado outbreaks in history.

http://www.facebook.com/twcdrforbes/posts/10150176514758201

So maybe in the heat of reporting, he exagerrated a bit and pulled back later. I see this guy alludes to a comment though pretty much just what Trey thought Forbes might have said though:

I have never seen anything like it. I just haven't and when Jeff Morrow, Jim Cantore and Dr. Greg Forbes say that they have never seen anything like this in their lives and they lived and studied through the 2 biggest outbreaks ever, 1974 and 1999, then you know the severity of this.

http://www.liveweatherblogs.com/weatherblog/19518/HISTORIC----

 

[Gary Stofer]

Happened to see the radar, and then catch the tornado as it went north of Birmingham yesterday on TWC. I was curious if that was a debris ball showing up in the tail end since it persisted several frames.

 

[Amanda Farnham]

An historical event and all the talk is on who said it was the worst they've seen and how that's wrong? C'mon gang.

Been looking for videos I hadn't seen posted yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0WgJruiSGQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0J_wZWZi7M

 

[Will Tinder]

That second one isn't Alabama... that video was taken last year in Texas, I believe.

 

[Jason Harris]

True enough Amanda, but it is interesting to see just where exactly this historic event sits up among the most significant outbreaks and individual tornadoes in particular. by the way, that second video you posted is from an earlier event (ah, like Will said):
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2010/10/video_we_are_in_the_tornado_fr.html

Just watching more of Forbes on aerial survey (not the exact same feature when he spoke before) but he said here "on one of the worst" he's seen and "may be the worst I've seen." Alright, horse is dead, beaten. Beaten again. Kick.

And was the tornado track really 300 miles or was that the length of the supercell track?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...ingham-alabama-news-tornadoes-science-nation/

 

[Trey Thee]

An historical event and all the talk is on who said it was the worst they've seen and how that's wrong? C'mon gang.

Been looking for videos I hadn't seen posted yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0WgJruiSGQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0J_wZWZi7M

Incredible videos. Perhaps the best thing to come out of the camera phone craze is that when stuff like this actually happens, the shear number of videos means that someone will accidentally get something of value, specifically to science.

 

[Trey Thee]

True enough Amanda, but it is interesting to see just where exactly this historic event sits up among the most significant outbreaks and individual tornadoes in particular. by the way, that second video you posted is from an earlier event (ah, like Will said):
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2010/10/video_we_are_in_the_tornado_fr.html

Just watching more of Forbes on aerial survey (not the exact same feature when he spoke before) but he said here "on one of the worst" he's seen and "may be the worst I've seen." Alright, horse is dead, beaten. Beaten again. Kick.

I had zero intent of starting a crapstorm, lets move on.

 

[Danny Neal]

IN THE COMMUNITY OF TANNER...THE INTENSITY WAS MAXIMIZED WITH A LARGE SWATH OF EF-4 DAMAGE AND A NARROW CORRIDOR OF HIGH END EF-4 TO NEAR EF-5 DAMAGE. - Per NWS Huntsville in latest PIS

 

[Danny Neal]

Phil Campbell, AL storm/Franklin Co.

Limestone/Madison Co.

 

[Jeff Duda]

http://www.alabamawx.com/ just posted #2 of the Aerials. #1 is a couple posts below. Good quality.
The drag marks on pavement and grass #1 at the first 20 seconds of tape is amazing. The whole thing is mind boggling. I did see some areas of pavement removed and a lot of de-barking. Maybe not a EF 5 on the entire path- but certainly in areas. Toward the end of #2 is what looks like a water installation with rubber lined ponds. One of the ponds looks sucked dry.

The thing that impresses me most about these videos (now there's 4 parts out) is the continuous miles of flattened forest with clear convergence vectors given the direction the trees are all falling. Given the 35 minutes of video and the fact that the helicopter was probably moving at ground speeds of around 80 - 100 mph, that means this tornado track is at least 47 - 58 miles long. I'm sure that's not all the damage, especially if it stayed on the ground to north of Birmingham or east, as one of the recent linked videos shows.

 

[Jeff Duda]

And was the tornado track really 300 miles or was that the length of the supercell track?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...ingham-alabama-news-tornadoes-science-nation/

Wow, so now national geographic is spreading incorrect information. Where will it end?

The mile-wide (1.6-kilometer-wide) Tuscaloosa tornado may have had winds exceeding 260 miles an hour (418 kilometers an hour), which would make it an F5 storm on the Fujita scale.

Not confirmed, to my knowledge. And since when did the Fujita scale replace the Enhanced Fujita Scale?

The scale ranks tornadoes from F1 to F5 based on wind speeds and destructive potential.

So apparently there's no longer an F0/EF0...

But favorable meteorological conditions may have sustained the Tuscaloosa twister for a record-breaking trek of 300 miles (482 kilometers) across Alabama and Georgia.

As Jason mentioned, the tornado itself probably did not travel 300 miles. It was the supercell that traveled that far. And I don't even know if 300 miles is a record for a supercell. What about the storm that produced the Yazoo City tornado last year? What about one of the supercells during the Super Tuesday outbreak? Path lengths of supercells don't get studied as much because they're harder to define, so I question this record.

This alley, which extends from the Dakotas south to the Gulf of Mexico, is bordered by the Rocky Mountains to the west and the Appalachian Mountains to the east.

I swear it gets bigger every year. And didn't a link someone posted a few months ago say this season would be a more active tornado season because there would be a north-south gradient of temperature from the Gulf to Canada?

 

[Jeff Duda]

Phil Campbell, AL storm/Franklin Co.

WITHIN THIS CORRIDOR, MANY HOUSES WERE COMPLETELY DESTROYED WITH LITTLE EVIDENCE THAT A HOUSE EXISTED AT THAT LOCATION OTHER THAN THE SLAB AND A DEBRIS PILE. SOME OF THESE HOUSES WERE WELL CONSTRUCTED

Hmm...given the wind speed bounds from DI2 (single family homes), that sounds like EF5 damage to me.

Limestone/Madison Co.

SEVERAL WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WITH ANCHOR BOLTING WERE COMPLETELY WIPED CLEAN. ONE HOME HAD THE DEBRIS CARRIED OVER 300 HUNDRED YARDS WITH LARGE ITEMS CARRIED COMPLETELY AWAY.

Again, sounds pretty definitively like EF5 damage.

 

[Todd Webb]

There's no telling how many tornadoes will ultimately be confirmed. I just learned that the NWS will be sending a survey crew to my part of Coweta County, GA tomorrow. I spoke to a horse trainer friend earlier this evening and he claims that there was a tornado in SW Coweta County that killed several cows. It makes me wonder how many small touchdowns occurred yesterday that may take days to identify.

 

[Andy Wehrle]

IN THE COMMUNITY OF TANNER...THE INTENSITY WAS MAXIMIZED WITH A LARGE SWATH OF EF-4 DAMAGE AND A NARROW CORRIDOR OF HIGH END EF-4 TO NEAR EF-5 DAMAGE. - Per NWS Huntsville in latest PIS

It's like F5 all over again (referring to Mark Levine's book about the Super Outbreak's impact in Limestone County, AL).