2014-04-28 MISC: MO AR LA MS TN IL IN KY AL

[Dave Gallaher]

I observed the passage of the cell that caused (preliminarily reported) EF-3 damage in Athens, AL as it passed through Hazel Green, AL a short time later. It cycled through a couple more tornadic phases before crossing the line into Tennessee. While I didn't attempt to approach the rain-wrapped meso area (trees, traffic, poor escape options), I did note some interesting features.

First was a small rotating lowering on the advancing gust front just south of Meridianville, AL

 

[Dave Gallaher]

(Sorry--was not allowed to post two images into the first message). Second was the visible shear in the environment. In this photo, the outflow is streaming the two flags to the ESE, while the lowest level of clouds overhead were rushing into the cell at nearly the exact opposite direction.

 

[Dave Gallaher]

Third, a view to the north of the massive wall of precip (including baseball-sized hail) as the cell departs Hazel Green for the Tennessee state line. Hours later, it looks like the same cell (or remnants of it) is still producing tornado warnings further north in Tennessee.

If someone would kindly remind me how to post actual images and not urls in the forum, I'd be grateful.

 

[Marcus Diaz]

1) upload to a 3rd party site like imgur, tinypic, or photobucket
2) copy the direct link of the image
3) in your post, type

replacing link.jpg with your image link.

 

[chrisbray]

Really bad storms last night in Alabama. Birmingham was spared a direct hit at the last minute. But plenty of outlying towns around there and Tuscaloosa took major damage.

 

[Dave Gallaher]

I'm looking forward to the analysis of that Birmingham cell that just seemed to fall apart all at once in what looked like a pretty favorable environment.

 

[Brian McWatters]

Impressive footage of the Louisville MS tornado:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5C_1Hmx82M