F-5

Is that an industrial area the Alexandria storm is approaching right now? That would be bad.

Hopefully the cell SW of Alexandria will cycle, looks like it's trying to, but Google earth shows the areas just north of Alexandria are fairly well populated and this looks to go right over them in about 30 minutes or so.

If one had to sum up the 2018 severe weather season so far they couldn’t do any better than this mornings 13z tornado probs outlook.

If the circulation got stronger there was a chance of a southward jog (right turn). Northwest is technically the direction I headed if you look at a google map of highway 280. Not a single cell all day had taken a due north jog, but even if it had, chances are very high it would have been cycling at that point and the tornado threat greatly diminished.

I'll put in my two cents here.....I live in the southern part of Birmingham and I am weather literate. I knew far in advance that any tornado that formed yesterday had the potential to do incredible damage. Even though I live in a well-built brick home with a basement, my policy on days like yesterday is to get the hell out of dodge if a strong circulation is coming my way and maintains a good radar sig for several scans. Right after 7pm, after the monster had roared through town, a tornado was spotted on the ground about 30 miles from me and heading my way. My house was in the center of the warning cone. A tornado emergency had been issued by BMX. I got the kids in the car and went 3-4 miles north on Hwy 280 towards Birmingham to achieve what I knew was a safe distance. Hwy 280 is the busiest road in the state and it was virtually deserted. We drove at a safe speed, obeyed traffic laws and had no problem getting to safe ground. I would do it again every time. However, if James Spann had told people to do exactly what I knew to do, the roads would have clogged immediately and thousands of people would have been exposed to grave danger. We need to separate what is common sense to weather savvy folks from what would cause the general public to panic.

Finally touched base with my employee who was in the path of the Birmingham tornado. Says it came within half a mile of them. In his words, "Fultondale has been leveled." Take that for what it's worth, but even after hours and hours of non-stop storm coverage from local TV media, not a lot of information or post-storm footage has really come out of the affected areas. That could be a very bad sign.

Easily the most unnerving thing about the day for me was seeing random leaves falling from high out of the sky on at least 3 different occasions over the course of a couple of hours with no storm within 25 miles of me. Here in the southern suburbs of Birmingham we barely even had any rain at all. Just updated the Alabama death toll to 64.

Looks like Sunny Side, GA took a direct hit.

The morning storms absolutely helped create the problems. It caused the most widespread damage I have seen in 10 years of living in Birmingham. No doubt there were numerous F0-F1 tornadoes this morning that caused damage in addition to the straight line winds. We finally got power on around midday but not everyone did. The warning siren systems down here are as good as anyone's. That would not be an issue on a normal day. -Just saw a convoy of national guard vehicles heading into Birmingham

I worked in a crew with Oswalt's father-in-law at Brown's Ferry Nuclear Plant near Athens, AL (the one referred to earlier as having to shut down after having power cut to it). Incidentally, Brown's Ferry is of the same design as the plant in Japan that is experiencing all the problems. Having personally been inside the reactor drywall of that plant, an F-5 could not damage the core. No chance. Losing power, however, is the same thing that caused the problems in Japan. It takes power to keep the reactor at a safe operating temperature.

Got a text from an employee in Fultondale, "Man its coming right at us". He's not responding to my texts asking if he is ok.

Power flickering here on the southside of Birmingham....

Well over 1 million. The areas that are being hit so far are full of small towns, but the overall population density is actually fairly high.