4/20/06 NOW: Southeast

[Sam Sagnella]

Tornado-warned storm approaching the Birmingham metro area; streaming video from WVTM is showing what appears to be a wall cloud from their 'skycam.'

radar from my-cast.com

EDIT: Spotters reporting a funnel cloud at 340PM
http://kamala.cod.edu/offs/KBMX/0604202048.wwus54.html

EDIT2: Tornado warning cancelled
http://kamala.cod.edu/offs/KBMX/0604202056.wwus54.html

 

[Dave Gallaher]

Couldn't chase today due to work scheduled in Tuscaloosa, but the trip there took us through three intense hail cores on I 65 north of Birmingham, and one in Birmingham---not the storm mentioned in Sam's post, as we were about 45 minutes behind it. However, the cell on the Cullman/Blount county border at about 4:20pm had excellent structure on the front with two rotational bands going across above the jagged shelf cloud. There were only a couple views of it going through wooded hills, and not enough time to stop to shoot video, but it was visually impressive; we took a good load of nickle-sized hail, with a few bigger hunks hitting the van at about 4:25pm--unable to see the big hunks, but the sound made them seem like roughly golfball sized.

When we left Tuscaloosa at about 1:30 am Friday, we were 'chased' out of town by another severe-warned cb that was approaching the city from the west along I-59. Arriving home at 4am, there are still lightning flashes in the north Alabama area---hopefully there will be some ignitable outflow boundaries hanging around for 4/21's activity.