thewxmann Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 No PNS yet, but the map on BMX's site confirms Tuscaloosa-BHM as EF4, Calhoun/St. Clair as EF3, and the two other Marion Co tornadoes as EF3? Kinda surprising as I expected Calhoun/St. Clair to be rated an EF4... EDIT: just released: PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BIRMINGHAM AL 1220 AM CDT MON MAY 2 2011 ...UPDATED FOR SHOTSVILLE TORNADO FINALIZED AS EF-3 RATING... ...UPDATED FOR TUSCALOOSA/BIRMINGHAM TORNADO FINALIZED AS A HIGH END EF-4 RATING... ...UPDATED FOR HALEYVILLE TORNADO FINALIZED AS EF-3 RATING... ...UPDATED FOR ARGO/SHOAL CREEK/OHATCHEE/FORNEY TORNADO FINALIZED AS EF-3 RATING... NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE METEOROLOGISTS WILL CONTINUE THE ASSESSMENT OF STORM DAMAGE FROM A TRAGICALLY HISTORIC DAY OF TORNADIC ACTIVITY AND SEVERE WEATHER ACROSS CENTRAL ALABAMA ON WEDNESDAY APRIL 27TH. A NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED STORM DAMAGE EXPERT WILL CONTINUE ASSISTING US IN EXAMINING THE LOCATIONS OF THE MOST EXTREME DAMAGE TO ENSURE WE PROVIDE THE MOST ACCURATE ASSESSMENT OF THIS EVENT AS POSSIBLE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 I'll be honest, I'm shocked that Tuscaloosa to Birmingham is staying EF-4. I also agree with thewxmann that the St. Clair county tornado should have been an EF-4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewxmann Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 I'll be honest, I'm shocked that Tuscaloosa to Birmingham is staying EF-4. A decade ago it wouldn't have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 A decade ago it wouldn't have. Yeah I don't know, I mean reading the PNS with all the tornadoes they seem contradicting from one tornado to the next, and if you ask me, looking at the damage of Hackleburg and comparing it to Tuscaloosa/Pleasant Grove, the damage is fairly equal in destruction if anything the Tuscaloosa/Pleasant Grove damage is worse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackjack123 Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 Yeah I don't know, I mean reading the PNS with all the tornadoes they seem contradicting from one tornado to the next, and if you ask me, looking at the damage of Hackleburg and comparing it to Tuscaloosa/Pleasant Grove, the damage is fairly equal in destruction if anything the Tuscaloosa/Pleasant Grove damage is worse. Tim Marshall did the surveys and he helped with the Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and Hackleburg tornadoes and I know he is very good at his work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chicago Storm Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 I'll be honest, I'm shocked that Tuscaloosa to Birmingham is staying EF-4. I also agree with thewxmann that the St. Clair county tornado should have been an EF-4. They do say this in the latest PNS... ADDITIONAL EVALUATION OF THE DAMAGE IN TUSCALOOSA AND JEFFERSON COUNTY WILL CONTINUE TODAY TO DETERMINE IF THE RATING NEEDS TO BE INCREASED. MORE DETAIL ON THE SURVEY RESULTS WILL BE UPDATED WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewxmann Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 Yeah I don't know, I mean reading the PNS with all the tornadoes they seem contradicting from one tornado to the next, and if you ask me, looking at the damage of Hackleburg and comparing it to Tuscaloosa/Pleasant Grove, the damage is fairly equal in destruction if anything the Tuscaloosa/Pleasant Grove damage is worse. Yeah iono. I dont want to play blackjack here ( ) but I don't understand their ratings of the BHM and the St. Clair tornadoes, moreso the latter. I mean if the STL tornado earlier this year got EF4 and the damage there didn't look half as bad as some of the damage pics I've seen of the latter tornado. They retain the statement of the "well-built" home being "nearly swept clean of everything". Moreover the inconsistencies between WFO's is disconcerting. HUN, MEG and JAN slapped an EF4 on damage that looked legitimately EF4. BMX has to go through deliberations. And FFC just doesnt give them out... some of the damage I've seen is clearly EF4'ish and Ringgold ought to be EF5. I understand they are the experts, but man... I dunno about these ratings... there is a HUGE jump between an EF3 and EF4 in the record books.... Not to mention the WFO inconsistencies. /soapbox Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 They do say this in the latest PNS... ADDITIONAL EVALUATION OF THE DAMAGE IN TUSCALOOSA AND JEFFERSON COUNTY WILL CONTINUE TODAY TO DETERMINE IF THE RATING NEEDS TO BE INCREASED. MORE DETAIL ON THE SURVEY RESULTS WILL BE UPDATED WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE. Yeah I noticed that but it contradicts the finalized EF-4 header, plus they have had that in on every PNS so it could be possible that they forgot to take it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtticaFanatica Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 It's not really a big deal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tornadotony Posted May 2, 2011 Author Share Posted May 2, 2011 Yeah iono. I dont want to play blackjack here ( ) but I don't understand their ratings of the BHM and the St. Clair tornadoes, moreso the latter. I mean if the STL tornado earlier this year got EF4 and the damage there didn't look half as bad as some of the damage pics I've seen of the latter tornado. They retain the statement of the "well-built" home being "nearly swept clean of everything". Moreover the inconsistencies between WFO's is disconcerting. HUN, MEG and JAN slapped an EF4 on damage that looked legitimately EF4. BMX has to go through deliberations. And FFC just doesnt give them out... some of the damage I've seen is clearly EF4'ish and Ringgold ought to be EF5. I understand they are the experts, but man... I dunno about these ratings... there is a HUGE jump between an EF3 and EF4 in the record books... /soapbox The ratings from FFC as per usual are bogus, plain and simple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 Yeah iono. I dont want to play blackjack here ( ) but I don't understand their ratings of the BHM and the St. Clair tornadoes, moreso the latter. I mean if the STL tornado earlier this year got EF4 and the damage there didn't look half as bad as some of the damage pics I've seen of the latter tornado. They retain the statement of the "well-built" home being "nearly swept clean of everything". Moreover the inconsistencies between WFO's is disconcerting. HUN, MEG and JAN slapped an EF4 on damage that looked legitimately EF4. BMX has to go through deliberations. And FFC just doesnt give them out... some of the damage I've seen is clearly EF4'ish and Ringgold ought to be EF5. I understand they are the experts, but man... I dunno about these ratings... there is a HUGE jump between an EF3 and EF4 in the record books... /soapbox That being said though, I do agree with a lot of this, the Georgia tornado certainly to me as to you should have been rated higher in Ringgold, the areas to the NE of it were rated EF-4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 It's not really a big deal. No I do agree with this, but there has to be consistency between ratings, which to me and others it certainly seems like there isn't here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chicago Storm Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 Yeah I noticed that but it contradicts the finalized EF-4 header, plus they have had that in on every PNS so it could be possible that they forgot to take it out. That's true. Wording in the text was only slightly changed from the last PNS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 That's true. Wording in the text was only slightly changed from the last PNS. Yeah, the whole thing seems a little odd, like what caused them to decide it was an EF-4 vs an EF-5. I mean they didn't really change the section about the tornado in the PNS. Comparing their PNS with HUN, it is night and day with the discussion/reasoning for classifications. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackjack123 Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 I agree with most of you on these ratings. I am going to write Tim Marshall and ask him why? It stated from like two of these two tornadoes one in Birmingham area and the other in the Spartanburg area where they stated in their statement "well-built" homes swept clean off their foundations and they both get rated high-end EF3 does not make a lot of sense to me either. As far as the Tuscaloosa/Birmingham tornado seems very borderline EF4/EF5 but where to draw the line is almost impossible to tell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewxmann Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 FWIW, embedded in the fine print of the Tuscaloosa-BHM section... DETAILED DAMAGE INSPECTION HAS REVEALED A MAXIMUM OF EF-4 DAMAGE FROM EAST OF HOLT...NEAR CONCORD...AND THE PLEASANT GROVE AREAS. Holt is to the east of Tuscaloosa... have they not rated Tuscaloosa or is Tuscaloosa not even EF4? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tornadotony Posted May 2, 2011 Author Share Posted May 2, 2011 FWIW, embedded in the fine print of the Tuscaloosa-BHM section... DETAILED DAMAGE INSPECTION HAS REVEALED A MAXIMUM OF EF-4 DAMAGE FROM EAST OF HOLT...NEAR CONCORD...AND THE PLEASANT GROVE AREAS. Holt is to the east of Tuscaloosa... have they not rated Tuscaloosa or is Tuscaloosa not even EF4? That would be beyond the absurd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtticaFanatica Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 What we've learned from mobile, Doppler radar studies is that the error bars on EF scale ratings are at least one EF scale rating, so I wouldn't be all that worried by one particular, boder-line tornado getting an n rating instead of an n+1 rating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 FWIW, embedded in the fine print of the Tuscaloosa-BHM section... DETAILED DAMAGE INSPECTION HAS REVEALED A MAXIMUM OF EF-4 DAMAGE FROM EAST OF HOLT...NEAR CONCORD...AND THE PLEASANT GROVE AREAS. Holt is to the east of Tuscaloosa... have they not rated Tuscaloosa or is Tuscaloosa not even EF4? Now that is a good question, but when you put out a finalized number its hard to make the first half of that question become feesible. However the 2nd half of the question would be astounding if that was true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharonA Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 I'm hopeful it's just someone who's dead tired at the keyboard, and they'd catch these little things like "that's final now, can go remove the preliminary wording" if they were conscious. It would be nice to have some consistency between the offices. Sometime's it's a great detailed narrative, sometimes it's barely more than "touchdown 4 miles north of townA, continued to just south of townB, destroyed 5 mobile homes and injured 2." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chicago Storm Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 TORNADO 9...CORDOVA TORNADO (WALKER COUNTY) PRELIMINARY DATA... EVENT DATE: APRIL 27, 2011 EVENT TYPE: EF-4 TORNADO ESTIMATED PEAK WINDS (MPH): AROUND 170 INJURIES/FATALITIES: DOZENS OF INJURIES/7 FATALITIES. EVENT START LOCATION AND TIME: TO BE DETERMINED SURVEY START LOCATION AND TIME: 33.7553/-87.1846 AT 456 PM. SURVEY END LOCATION: 33.8303/-87.0580 EVENT END LOCATION AND TIME: TO BE DETERMINED DAMAGE PATH LENGTH (IN MILES): 8.9 MILES SURVEYED SO FAR WIDTH: TO BE DETERMINED NOTE: THIS DATA IS PRELIMINARY. TRACK COULD GO AS FAR BACK AS PICKENS COUNTY AND EXTENDS INTO CULLMAN COUNTY AND POSSIBLY AS FAR AS BLOUNT COUNTY. NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE METEOROLOGISTS SURVEYED AND RATED A PORTION OF THE TORNADO TRACK IN WALKER COUNTY. IT HAS BEEN DETERMINED THAT THIS PORTION OF THE DAMAGE WAS CONSISTENT WITH A VIOLENT TORNADO. THE SURVEYED TORNADO TRACK WAS NOTED FROM DOWNTOWN CORDOVA IN A 1/2 MILE WIDE SWATH OF EF-3 DAMAGE. FROM THERE...THE TORNADO TRACKED TO THE NORTHEAST ACROSS BURTON CHAPEL LOOP ROAD AND CROSSED THE MULBERRY FORK OF THE BLACK WARRIOR RIVER. AS IT CROSSED MOUNTAINVIEW ROAD...THE TORNADO INCREASED TO A VIOLENT EF-4 RATING...AS IT DESTROYED 2 SINGLE-WIDE MOBILE HOMES...AS WELL AS A SINGLE FAMILY HOME. ONE OF THE UNDERCARRIAGES IS MISSING...HAVING BEEN TOSSED AT LEAST 500 YARDS. AT THIS SITE...A SMALL BULLDOZER WAS FLIPPED OVER...A PICKUP TRUCK WAS TOSSED 200 YARDS AND AN INTERNATIONAL 4700 DUMP TRUCK WAS TOSSED 50 YARDS BEING DESTROYED UPON LANDING. A 2 TON UTILITY TRAILER FROM THIS LOCATION WAS FOUND A MILE AWAY...WITH A 2.5 FOOT IMPACT CRATER WHERE IT LANDED. AS THE TORNADO NEARED OLD HIGHWAY 78...IT TOSSED TWO DOUBLE-WIDE MOBILE HOMES AT LEAST 100 YARDS...BECOMING AIRBORNE WITH THE FRAMES ON TOP OF THE DEBRIS. THE TORNADO CONTINUED TRACKING TOWARD SIPSEY...WHERE AND UNANCHORED DOUBLE-WIDE MOBILE HOME WAS TOSSED 100 FEET UP A 50 FOOT EMBANKMENT. THE TORNADO CONTINUED AT A MINIMUM OF EF-2 STRENGTH TO THE EAST...THEN INTENSIFIED AS IT CAME OFF A BLUFF...DESTROYING A HOME. NUMEROUS HOMES AND MANUFACTURED HOMES WERE EITHER DAMAGED OR DESTROYED ALONG THIS PATH. THE TORNADO IS BELIEVED TO HAVE CONTINUED NORTHEAST INTO CULLMAN COUNTY...WHERE NWS HUNTSVILLE FOUND A CONTINUED PATH AND POSSIBLY INTO PARTS OF NORTHWEST BLOUNT COUNTY. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 Tony do we have an updated tornado count, I know you posted one yesterday I believe, wondering if we have gone up in number since then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tornadotony Posted May 2, 2011 Author Share Posted May 2, 2011 Tony do we have an updated tornado count, I know you posted one yesterday I believe, wondering if we have gone up in number since then. Yeah I about gave up. I don't normally, but this is insane. I do know we are up to 9 EF4s and 2 EF5s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 Yeah I about gave up. I don't normally, but this is insane. I do know we are up to 9 EF4s and 2 EF5s. Yeah I don't blame you there is just so many to count, I know that Knoxville alone had a bunch of EF-0s. At this point I wouldn't be entirely shocked if the final number ended up in the 170-190 range. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tornadotony Posted May 2, 2011 Author Share Posted May 2, 2011 Yeah I don't blame you there is just so many to count, I know that Knoxville alone had a bunch of EF-0s. At this point I wouldn't be entirely shocked if the final number ended up in the 170-190 range. It's into the 160s. The hell is the HUN/BMX/MEG/JAN convergence region. All those long-trackers crossing 2-3 CWAs = pain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chicago Storm Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 It's into the 160s. The hell is the HUN/BMX/MEG/JAN convergence region. All those long-trackers crossing 2-3 CWAs = pain. My count is up to 169 from the 26-28th, but I did not go through to see which ones crossed CWA's, so the number is likely a handful too high. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HurricaneJosh Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 I'm hopeful it's just someone who's dead tired at the keyboard, and they'd catch these little things like "that's final now, can go remove the preliminary wording" if they were conscious. It would be nice to have some consistency between the offices. Sometime's it's a great detailed narrative, sometimes it's barely more than "touchdown 4 miles north of townA, continued to just south of townB, destroyed 5 mobile homes and injured 2." Tropical Cyclone Reports are the same way-- there's a huge range. Some are rich with details Re: the cyclone's core structure, impact, etc., while others are totally barebones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackjack123 Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 Now that is a good question, but when you put out a finalized number its hard to make the first half of that question become feesible. However the 2nd half of the question would be astounding if that was true. Talked to a nice lady with NWS in Birmingham and she said there was EF4 damage found in the city of Tuscaloosa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 2, 2011 Share Posted May 2, 2011 It's into the 160s. The hell is the HUN/BMX/MEG/JAN convergence region. All those long-trackers crossing 2-3 CWAs = pain. Yeah that would be like a tornado going from Hillsdale County to Jackson County to Washtenaw County, would pass through 3 CWAs. Also if its in the 160s now, I bet we settle somewhere around 175, which is simply amazing. What is even more amazing is that so far this year we have had 3 outbreaks of tornadoes with over 80 in each. I knew this year would be active, I never in my wildest dreams would have thought it would have been this bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tornadotony Posted May 2, 2011 Author Share Posted May 2, 2011 Also, the Hackleburg/Phil Campbell/Tanner/Madison tornado killed at least 77 people. That is unbelievable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.