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Severe April 27th 2011 Memories

Storm5

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I just remember waking my wife up as she worked nights at the time and we went downstairs in the bathroom and covered up with sofa cushions. I remember running down the hall thinking it was headed right for us. Thankfully it passed a quarter mile south of the house . I will never forget how loud it got outside and hearing debris bouncing of the roof . When we went outside after the storm passed there was debris everywhere and all kinds of stuff still flying around in the air . The trees were plastered with debris in them . We walked out of the subdivision and turned to the left and you could see complete devastation just down the road . Something I will never forget


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I remember being shocked by the parameters in play that morning then the Cullman tornado made it real. Just one of those days that leaves you speechless when you think about it.

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I put this in the Banter thread but better served here.

THIS DAY THOUGH! It has been six years and the memories are still fresh and haunting. The weather weenie in me was so excited and then the human side of me was crushed. Fortunately for us, we only had minor damage, from the morning storms, and no injuries or death. But seeing the carnage others endured on property and life is something I cannot erase from memory. Not to be too graphic, but I had co-workers who carried injured and deceased neighbors through debris to get to First Responders. That will change people forever.

Spann included this from author Rick Bragg in his blog this morning. So eloquently sums it up:

“Where the awful winds bore down, massive oaks, 100 years old, were shoved over like stems of grass, and great pines, as big around as 55-gallon drums, snapped like sticks. Church sanctuaries, built on the Rock of Ages, tumbled into random piles of brick. Houses, echoing with the footfalls of generations, came apart, and blew away like paper. Whole communities, carefully planned, splintered into chaos. Restaurants and supermarkets, gas stations and corner stores, all disintegrated, glass storefronts scattered like diamonds on black asphalt. It was as if the very curve of the Earth was altered, horizons erased altogether, the landscape so ruined and unfamiliar that those who ran from this thing, some of them, could not find their way home.

We are accustomed to storms, here where the cool air drifts south to collide with the warm, rising damp from the Gulf, where black clouds roil and spin and unleash hell on Earth. But this was different, a gothic monster off the scale of our experience and even our imagination, a thing of freakish size and power that tore through state after state and heart after Southern heart, killing hundreds, hurting thousands, even affecting, perhaps forever, how we look at the sky.”
 
At the time I lived at the south intersection of i459 and i20, so about a mile south of the BHM/TCL ef4 that rolled through. That morning's system had a brief spin up that cut a path about 50 yards from the house and effectively barricaded us in as we lived on a dead in street and trees and power lines were knocked onto the road out. Then the BHM/TCL tornado happened and destroyed our farm in Concord, AL. We had purchased in a couple of years prior (known as the Berry Patch to the locals) and were about to move out there within the year or so. That tornado cut a path right through the farm and destroyed the house, two barns, and all the produce on it. I spent several days picking debris out of the field, and by debris I mean 2x6's shot into the ground, refrigerators, freezers, AC units, TV's, vehicles, boats, and what seemed like endless shingles and the roofing tacks that made them less fun to pick up. I have a lot of pictures. That day changed a lot about my wife and I's lives, but it didn't have near the impact of those who lost so much more.

I will forever remember being in the basement during the main show reading Talkweather and Spann's weather blog along with a few twitter feeds and seeing the damage reports roll in. I can honestly say I've never been more scared in my life, especially knowing the damage that tornado was doing and the path it was on, which seemed like it was directly toward us.

A few weeks later I remember watching the Joplin tornado happen on TWC and seeing Mike Bettes break down. That got me in the feels.

Craziest two months of weather I can remember.
 
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My experience, thankfully isn't bad. I will say that it still bothers me quite a bit and that day is the main reason that I have lilapsophobia now.

It was about 1:30-2:00 in the morning, my phone goes off with a call from my grandfather. He says "Phillip there is a tornado coming right at you, they said high falls by name!" (that's the town I'm in) and I woke my wife, we got the kids and went into the crawl space. The bad part is that we live in a modular home and at the time I didn't bother enough with the weather to realize how useless it was to even go into the crawl space like that. Anyway, that's what we did. I had a weather app on my phone, I think it was weather bug at the time which had a really crappy map and was very slow, but it's what I had. When it looked like the red part was past us we went back in the house, then it really started to storm. I looked at the app again and a hook had formed and we were directly in the middle of it. That lasted at least 20 minutes or so, just a violent storm. My grandfather called again to check in and to let me know that the tornado had passed. That was the extent of our experience that night.

The thing is though, even after all of that it hadn't hit me what actually happened. The next morning is when it set in. I drove to work and had to go right through the damage path, trees were snapped like toothpicks for a path nearly a half mile wide and as far as you could see in either direction. It was absolutely unbelievable. I have never seen anything like that with my own eyes before and I pray that I never do again. After seeing the damage and seeing how close it was to my house (less than a mile) it immediately made me realize how stupid I had been when it came to weather. I realized that if that thing had hit my home my entire family would be dead. Since that time I have paid very close attention to weather, even days in advance. I'm still in that same home, and still don't have any means to protect everyone except for going to my inlaws house which always ends up in a shouting match with my wife because she hates the inconvenience.

That tornado was an EF3 with a path several miles long, the greatest blessing of that is that it was almost entierly rural land. It crossed U.S hwy 41 and destroyed a gas station, then crossed Hwy 36, through the woods and over I-75, then crossed my street, after that it claimed a victim, a little girl who was pulled from her bed in the middle of the night. Finally the tornado lifted around Hwy 42 before it went right into a populated town. I think about it often, and I always feel pain for the girl and her family, it was such a tragedy and it shames me to say that I didn't even know it was supposed to rain that day. That night really did change me forever, I now have a storm phobia which isn't fun but I am never caught unaware by weather now. I'm also going to make the investment, as soon as possible into an in ground storm shelter. Today is another day where I am watching a system heading right for me and I have no safe place to go, that shelter will happen, I just can't afford it right now.
 
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I remember being shocked by the parameters in play that morning then the Cullman tornado made it real. Just one of those days that leaves you speechless when you think about it.

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Yeah was scary for me too. I saw the massive spiral echo on the radar headed for my area in south Raleigh and had to get everyone under the stairs in the tiny bathroom. Thankfully it missed us to the west about a mile away.


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Sights like this were common in Madison and Limestone counties in north Alabama after the Hackleburg - Phil Campbell tornado blew through here.
 
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