Brick Tamland Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 Yea twitter posted on another forum. I mean exactly what twitter feeds are they? Are they from officials or just people spreading rumors? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATL_Militarypolice Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 I mean exactly what twitter feeds are they? Are they from officials or just people spreading rumors? Can't tell you. Unconfirmed at this moment. If I were to guess they are official...It would be a really cruel thing to spread rumors like that around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dsaur Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 We don't have sirens in Spalding Co. I can't help but think sirens would have helped. The closest damage I found when I went out today was maybe 4000' nw for a flying crow. Shredded leaves in the road then trees in houses. At 45 hundred (guessing, of course) trees in houses without roofs. At 5000' trees in places where houses once were. About 2 miles north in Sunny Side, I heard a woman disappeared while walking from a womans home that lost it's roof to a convience store that fell in on itself. I can't help but think a wailing siren would have made her think twice about going out walking but who knows about her health had she stayed. A friend who lives maybe 3000 feet from the damage was asleep, and wondered why I didn't call to warn her. She didn't have a weather radio, and her tv, via antenna, was acting up due to the storms so she went to bed. I didn't imagine she wasn't aware of what was going on and told her so, and she said, "they are always going on about every little storm that comes by so I didn't think twice about it...it seemed the bad stuff was in Ala." Can't help but think a siren would have kept her awake. But there in lies the rub. The Atla. stations often go on and on about every little tree hopper that comes by somewhere in the viewing area, so when you get a major outbreak, with training tornadic storms, on the ground, not just in the clouds, which is pretty rare, lots of folks are innured to the scary reporting. Of the three folks who I knew were close to the path as I watched it last night, all were asleep, and the one I did call had his phone turned off so he could sleep undisturbed. I can't help but think a siren would have helped all three. But if it goes off for every little tree top hopper a few counties away, it would be the same crying wolf situation. It is a thorny problem. T Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superstorm93 Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 Ariel view of the devastation in Tuscaloosa. Sorry if this was posted already: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moose4 Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 Amazing Facebook pictures from the Rosedale Court housing project in Tuscaloosa: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bdevil02 Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 Amazing Facebook pictures from the Rosedale Court housing project in Tuscaloosa: http://www.facebook....204116842941936 wow. Tragic pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eyes2theskies Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 Ariel view of the devastation in Tuscaloosa. Sorry if this was posted already: This is a chilling video, I mean this thing was so strong it took out a railroad bridge. That is just unbelievable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LiQuiDBuD Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 That video. Wow...just wow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gastonwxman Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 This is a chilling video, I mean this thing was so strong it took out a railroad bridge. That is just unbelievable. Man....The damage just keeps going the longer you travel along the area. Even some of the strong structured buildings took quite a beating. I really hope the people living there have someplace to go. Absolutely depressing. It's events like this that can change your whole view at life. It most likely has done so for those folks. If I had the money to spare, I would give to help them out. They and others who took a substantial hit from the tornadoes and such need it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 Man....The damage just keeps going the longer you travel along the area. Even some of the strong structured buildings took quite a beating. I really hope the people living there have someplace to go. Absolutely depressing. It's events like this that can change your whole view at life. It most likely has done so for those folks. If I had the money to spare, I would give to help them out. They and others who took a substantial hit from the tornadoes and such need it. That is the thing right there, you have continuous damage for over 50 miles like this, which is absolutely surreal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NavarreDon Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 That video. Wow...just wow. +1 just jaw dropping! The debris field is just so expansive. Something that a weenie like me is not used to seeing with a tornado. Through most of the video it seemed more like I was looking at damage from a large cat 3 - cat 4 hurricane with wind & surge damage. It leaves you speechless with your mouth hanging open as you watch! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carvers Gap Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 On Facebook look for this name and go to photos on their wall for pics of Glade Spring tornado damage - staggering. ThreeRivers Wyve Wxbx Wloy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lsross Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 Watching ABC World News right now and just weeping with these people. Such tragedy, such raw terror, is hard to comprehend. Someone posted that most of these people died hunkered down in their homes, hoping they would be lucky and the tornado would pass them by. After observing the Birmingham tornado on TWC, and seeing the line of storms heading into Georgia, I left my home last night, taking my next door neighbor with me. She is 88 and lives by herself. I just keep an eye on her and make sure she is doing OK. We went to my office building down the street, a large concrete structure with plenty of interior space, interior stair wells, to hide. I even took my cats. It never got bad other than one big rain storm as the tornadoes went both north and south of our location. After three hours, we returned home, tired but feeling we had done the correct thing. What if one of those monsters had hit my town? Even an EF3 would do considerable damage to my little home. No basement to go to. Many, many windows. Only a small interior bathroom and I know that is not a place to hide. Please God let the rest of this spring be better. We have had enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
downeastnc Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 Watching ABC World News right now and just weeping with these people. Such tragedy, such raw terror, is hard to comprehend. Someone posted that most of these people died hunkered down in their homes, hoping they would be lucky and the tornado would pass them by. After observing the Birmingham tornado on TWC, and seeing the line of storms heading into Georgia, I left my home last night, taking my next door neighbor with me. She is 88 and lives by herself. I just keep an eye on her and make sure she is doing OK. We went to my office building down the street, a large concrete structure with plenty of interior space, interior stair wells, to hide. I even took my cats. It never got bad other than one big rain storm as the tornadoes went both north and south of our location. After three hours, we returned home, tired but feeling we had done the correct thing. What if one of those monsters had hit my town? Even an EF3 would do considerable damage to my little home. No basement to go to. Many, many windows. Only a small interior bathroom and I know that is not a place to hide. Please God let the rest of this spring be better. We have had enough. It really is a horrible way to spend your last few minutes on this earth. Many reports of people being found dead in basement and inside rubble piles in what would have been the inner rooms of their homes. The photo of the obviously injured father crying as he holds his infant son amid the rubble is hard to look at. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weatherman566 Posted April 28, 2011 Share Posted April 28, 2011 +1 just jaw dropping! The debris field is just so expansive. Something that a weenie like me is not used to seeing with a tornado. Through most of the video it seemed more like I was looking at damage from a large cat 3 - cat 4 hurricane with wind & surge damage. It leaves you speechless with your mouth hanging open as you watch! When looking at the tornado damage in Tuscaloosa, I can't stop thinking about how horrible these images truly are. It's like looking at the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew after it hit the Miami-Dade area. Just truly horrifying. Nothing could have prevented these casualties. I'm praying for all of these people. I'm just glad the weather isn't forecasted to be bad in the near future. Who would have ever imagined a possible EF4-5 one mile wide tornado would hit a very populated city? 2011 is just breaking records. Scared to see what happens in the tropics this season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moose4 Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 So a question about assessment. In order to come up with the estimated windspeed and the EF rating of a tornado, do the teams just use a damage survey? Do the Doppler radar images enter into it at all? I know they're seeing relative velocity aloft depending on distance and angle and not on the ground. I guess there's no rule like they use for hurricanes of measuring the wind aloft at a certain level and then applying a correction factor to get an estimated ground-level windspeed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharonA Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 The analysis thread looked like the right place to post this, so ... We knew days in advance Something Big was likely. And yup, it happened. From a meteorology standpoint, what worked and what didn't? What features did we end up overvaluing - and what did we miss? Is there any comparison yet between the cloud cover during the day against what actually happened with storms in those areas? Any thoughts on what features contributed to Atlanta metro core being largely spared, in between two swaths of storms? (Easier to show with this graphic of the warnings issued by FFC: http://www.srh.noaa....rts_april27.png) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snowless in Carrollton Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 I get the feeling that a good number of the people who died in AL lived in mobile homes. 25 people bodies recovered near a trailer park in AL. If you stay in a trailer during a tornado, then you are pretty much committing suicide. Why on earth would you not leave your mobile home ??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snowless in Carrollton Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 The analysis thread looked like the right place to post this, so ... We knew days in advance Something Big was likely. And yup, it happened. From a meteorology standpoint, what worked and what didn't? What features did we end up overvaluing - and what did we miss? Is there any comparison yet between the cloud cover during the day against what actually happened with storms in those areas? Any thoughts on what features contributed to Atlanta metro core being largely spared, in between two swaths of storms? (Easier to show with this graphic of the warnings issued by FFC: http://www.srh.noaa....rts_april27.png) That's one of the phenomenons that I don't think anyone knows the answer to. Storms from AL hit the Georgia border and then weaken as they move into Metro Atlanta. Happens nearly every time. Yesterday people were saying that wouldn't be the case since Atlanta wouldn't be protected by a wedge of cool air, but fortunately they were wrong. One possible explanation is that because they came in so late at night (9 or 10pm), there wasn't much heating of the day left and that helped weaken them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATL_Militarypolice Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 The analysis thread looked like the right place to post this, so ... We knew days in advance Something Big was likely. And yup, it happened. From a meteorology standpoint, what worked and what didn't? What features did we end up overvaluing - and what did we miss? Is there any comparison yet between the cloud cover during the day against what actually happened with storms in those areas? Any thoughts on what features contributed to Atlanta metro core being largely spared, in between two swaths of storms? (Easier to show with this graphic of the warnings issued by FFC: http://www.srh.noaa....rts_april27.png) Good questions. I to want to know what caused a good chunk of the Atlanta metro to be saved from these storms. Hopefully a met can answer these. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATL_Militarypolice Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 That's one of the phenomenons that I don't think anyone knows the answer to. Storms from AL hit the Georgia border and then weaken as they move into Metro Atlanta. Happens nearly every time. Yesterday people were saying that wouldn't be the case since Atlanta wouldn't be protected by a wedge of cool air, but fortunately they were wrong. One possible explanation is that because they came in so late at night (9 or 10pm), there wasn't much heating of the day left and that helped weaken them. Yea, but when the storms were coming into Georgia, Atlanta was still in the 80's for a good while. Further north where they had the tornado, I believe that were in the 70's and south of Atlanta in the 80's. So I don't think it was the loss of daytime heating. That one supercell tracked into the NE Georgia mountains, and eventually into North Carolina, they were cooler than Atlanta, but still able to support the supercell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snowless in Carrollton Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 Yea, but when the storms were coming into Georgia, Atlanta was still in the 80's for a good while. Further north where they had the tornado, I believe that were in the 70's and south of Atlanta in the 80's. So I don't think it was the loss of daytime heating. That one supercell tracked into the NE Georgia mountains, and eventually into North Carolina, they were cooler than Atlanta, but still able to support the supercell. My area and the Atlanta area just got really lucky, as we have most of the spring. Maybe there is no explanation other than we were just lucky. But if there is a meteorological reason why Metro atlanta was spared it would be nice to know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharonA Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 That's one of the phenomenons that I don't think anyone knows the answer to. Storms from AL hit the Georgia border and then weaken as they move into Metro Atlanta. Happens nearly every time. Yesterday people were saying that wouldn't be the case since Atlanta wouldn't be protected by a wedge of cool air, but fortunately they were wrong. One possible explanation is that because they came in so late at night (9 or 10pm), there wasn't much heating of the day left and that helped weaken them. Yes, but I'll offer as rebuttal that the storms to the south came in hours later. Even after midnight we still had a few discrete cells dropping tornados (Sunnyside, for example), although by then the cells further south were starting to become squall-line-ish as forecast. Still deadly, tho. In general, yeah, stuff happens as you described ... I live in western Douglas County, very near the Carroll border, close enough to hear their siren, and radar often shows a SVR coming into Carroll and weakening by the time it hits Douglas. In one of the other threads for this event, someone posted a graphic of tornados in GA for the last few years ... Carroll had 20+, Douglas had *nine*, Fulton & Cobb & Coweta all higher. We were this little triangle of single-digits. It can't be the population-reporting argument, because Carroll's even more rural than Douglas, and northern & eastern Douglas has swaths of subdivisions rivaling Cobb/Fulton's sprawl. Anyhow, back to this specific event. Could the earlier cells punching through AL-GA have somehow made conditions less favorable to their immediate south? Or something else? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snowless in Carrollton Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 Yes, but I'll offer as rebuttal that the storms to the south came in hours later. Even after midnight we still had a few discrete cells dropping tornados (Sunnyside, for example), although by then the cells further south were starting to become squall-line-ish as forecast. Still deadly, tho. In general, yeah, stuff happens as you described ... I live in western Douglas County, very near the Carroll border, close enough to hear their siren, and radar often shows a SVR coming into Carroll and weakening by the time it hits Douglas. In one of the other threads for this event, someone posted a graphic of tornados in GA for the last few years ... Carroll had 20+, Douglas had *nine*, Fulton & Cobb & Coweta all higher. We were this little triangle of single-digits. It can't be the population-reporting argument, because Carroll's even more rural than Douglas, and northern & eastern Douglas has swaths of subdivisions rivaling Cobb/Fulton's sprawl. Anyhow, back to this specific event. Could the earlier cells punching through AL-GA have somehow inhibited development to their immediate south? Or something else? Carroll is a lot more rural than Douglas, but at the same time the populations are not too much different, and Carroll is about twice as big in land area. So I think one reason why Douglas hasn't had as many tornadoes is because it's a pretty small county land-wise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Psalm 148:8 Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 Reality still taking a while to set in....3 miles as the crow flies to my NW was a tornado touchdown.....saw the trees and a house with roof damage....This morning husband saw the destruction south of LaGrange on Whitesville Rd...He saw one house that was on a hill....the front wall was standing but only holes where the windows and front door were....the 2 side walls were about 3 feet high....that's it...nothing else left. It was very sobering as I walked around the yard this evening....I found 2 pieces of cotton ball sized insulation, 5 hand sized pieces of roofing felt (one with a nail hole in it), half of a IRS form (2005 Form 1099 MISC)...there was no information on it...and last night before we put the dog back in her pen husband went out to make sure the fence was secure and found a gallon sized ziplock freezer bag...I am guessing that this debris was from the tornado in Elmore/Tallapoosa County Alabama...That supercell weakened in Chambers apparently and then dropped the debris just before it dropped the tornado/tornadoes in Troup county. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weatherman566 Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 My area and the Atlanta area just got really lucky, as we have most of the spring. Maybe there is no explanation other than we were just lucky. But if there is a meteorological reason why Metro atlanta was spared it would be nice to know. I think the reason the storms dodged Atlanta could have been because of the Urban Effect on Convection. Here's a paper discussing the scientific effects of the Urban Effect on convection. CLICK HERE Of course, this is just a guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snowless in Carrollton Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 Another thing I'm interested in finding out, is why was there so little rain in the Atlanta area and surrounding areas ? Gainesville, GA got .03" of rain. I was expecting 1-2 inches out of this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharonA Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 Carroll is a lot more rural than Douglas, but at the same time the populations are not too much different, and Carroll is about twice as big in land area. So I think one reason why Douglas hasn't had as many tornadoes is because it's a pretty small county land-wise. Good point. What would help even that out is comparing tornados-per-square-mile with population density. Kicking myself for not thinking of that earlier (should have caught it, sheez, data analysis like that is how I pay my mortgage after all aaarrgh). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MotoWeatherman Posted April 29, 2011 Share Posted April 29, 2011 Yes, but I'll offer as rebuttal that the storms to the south came in hours later. Even after midnight we still had a few discrete cells dropping tornados (Sunnyside, for example), although by then the cells further south were starting to become squall-line-ish as forecast. Still deadly, tho. In general, yeah, stuff happens as you described ... I live in western Douglas County, very near the Carroll border, close enough to hear their siren, and radar often shows a SVR coming into Carroll and weakening by the time it hits Douglas. In one of the other threads for this event, someone posted a graphic of tornados in GA for the last few years ... Carroll had 20+, Douglas had *nine*, Fulton & Cobb & Coweta all higher. We were this little triangle of single-digits. It can't be the population-reporting argument, because Carroll's even more rural than Douglas, and northern & eastern Douglas has swaths of subdivisions rivaling Cobb/Fulton's sprawl. Anyhow, back to this specific event. Could the earlier cells punching through AL-GA have somehow made conditions less favorable to their immediate south? Or something else? The surface and upper level dynamics where lifting to the north into the ohio valley during the day so the best dynamics went with it. Alabama just happened to be in the best spot for all the ingredients to come together. By the time the system moved into GA the dynamics that created all the fireworks in AL where much further north than they were when Alabama was at its worst. It's all about timing.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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