Not to mention their reactions when it went as high as 17.5!
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Discussion of April 27, 2011 Outbreak
- Thread starter WesL
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- 4/27 outbreak tw archive
On a brighter note, today marks the 3rd Anniversary of my street naming ceremony in Smithville. Johnny Parker Street is located right next to the Town's April 27th Memorial
akt1985
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Central Ohio Wx
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Interestingly this was considered lost media (aka video or audio that is considered to not currently be extant on the internet despite it being in the past) until I stumbled across it on IA yesterday; couldn't resist uploading it to YouTube in MP4 form. Huntsville SKYWARN net from that day.
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Thanks for sharing. I can't listen to this right now, so I have to ask - the graphic on the video shows a 1-hour time period, but the upload is actually 3 hours long. Why?
Central Ohio Wx
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I made it at like 11 pm, so just a brain fart on my end. I don't expect a ton of people to see it so I'm not going to kill my computer's storage re-uploading it with the fixed title.
In actuality it covers the timeframe from 6:14 pm to 9:14 pm CDT. I have another 30-minute clipping from ~3:00 pm that I just haven't uploaded yet, as well as another very short snippet on the same transmitter.
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No biggie. I was just wondering. The content is there and that is what matters.
Central Ohio Wx
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Indeed! And I am very glad I located it as it’s basically a time capsule of what people were seeing on the ground that horrible day.
Awesome find dude (and killer YouTube username to boot).
Central Ohio Wx
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I'm still actively searching for Marion County Fire & Sheriff's (county Hackleburg is in) dispatch from 3:00 to 7:00 pm that day; there is a story that recently floated around of a firefighter finding a face (yes, an entire human face) in somebody's front yard, but I'm really not buying that it's real. Dispatch would be the best way to prove/disprove it.
That would be a great find too. Is there audio for Birmingham SKYWARN that day as well?
On the subject of Hackleburg: One of the more haunting moments, especially looking back, of Spann’s coverage that day is when they talked to, I believe, the Hackleburg/Marion Co. EMA director. It was around 7-8 PM, and all the eyes had been on either Cullman, Tuscaloosa, and Birmingham up to that point.
The director essentially says (paraphrasing from memory here) there are sections and homes of Hackleburg that are essentially gone. That he had seen Guin in 1974, that this was comparable and that it looked like an EF5, stating it was just complete destruction. Usually those “first reports” contain quite a bit of hyperbole, but you could just tell it was sincere in his voice tone. Spann picked up on it as well.
Central Ohio Wx
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Yup! I’m actually actively stitching the audio together and will post the video here when done. For some reason you can’t find the full audio online, just random snippets of it. I’m going to reach out to the people who run the repeater and see if they have the full thing on a file somewhere; pretty sure my local net has every activation saved on a server.
I’ve also got SKYWARN from Piedmont 1994 and Tuscaloosa 2000 .
NorthGaWeather
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I love this stuff. I hope you get the chance to upload those as well.
Central Ohio Wx
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Disregard! Apparently every transmission I came across is actually from Tuscaloosa 2000; the close proximities in damage probably led to the mix-up. I started getting suspicious when Englewood kept getting brought up, as that suburb is way outside of the 2011 EF4’s path. Sure enough, the 2000 F4 directly cored Englewood.
Sorry for the let down lol. So there is, as far as I’m aware, no extant audio of BHam SKYWARN that day outside of one video taken of Cordova where it is audible in the background. Still gonna contact the repeater owners to see; I’m sure some of the stuff transmitted on that repeater is absolutely horrifying to listen to.
For those unaware, a repeater is like a beacon that lets radio signals go further (aka the “repeating” part). SKYWARN “nets” are repeaters that are activated at the request of either the NWS or EMA officials (it can also mean a group of repeaters within a WFO; ILN has three iirc) when severe weather is expected; all SKYWARN reports over amateur radio are relayed through the repeater and to the net control operator located at the office’s headquarters. I’ll be posting more about this in the future so I thought I might as well explain, as I know not everyone here is a SKYWARN spotter or radio junkie.
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CheeselandSkies
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Ironically, veteran chaser Tony Laubach just uploaded a long-form retrospective on his May 12, 2004 chase (a localized significant tornado event in south-central Kansas that many active chasers of the time were on, featuring the well-known Attica video). Starting around the 12-minute mark as they're sitting in Pratt there's some radio chatter from what sounds like a local law enforcement officer giving the chasers info on the repeaters and cell coverage in the area.
"Well, we'll probably have about a hundred storm chasers here in the next hour and a half. I'm sure we'll tie up your repeater and you'll regret giving us that information."
No worries at all man. I’m a 4/27 junkie, and even the Huntsville find is a gem.
I did want to ask you, since you have a knack at locating these types of things. Have you been able to procure or find a copy of Brian Peters’ and Tim Coleman’s live stream/video chase from that day? I know they see both the Cordova and Birmingham tornados, and further chase the new Birmingham supercell as it drops the Ohatchee Storm.
I was going to reach out to both of them, but never could find reliable contact information.
DanLarsen34
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Just discovered this thread. 4/27/2011 was basically the last high-end event that I didn’t fully track in real-time. I was in my first year of undergrad at UW-Milwaukee. I vaguely remember being aware that it was a high-risk day, but I didn’t have RadarScope or another app like it at the time where I tracked the event in real-time.
I think I got back to my dorm around the time that the Tuscaloosa tornado was entering Birmingham and watched that on the weather channel. I also remembering pulling up the NWS site and being shocked at the number of tornado warnings and discrete cells that were happening in real-time.
Something I’ve thought about a lot over the years is I would like to know what this event would look like in this era of rapid-refresh and dual-polarization radar. While we got good looks at a lot of the violent tornadoes that day on radar, we were only getting them every couple of minutes and we were just before the time where CC would come into use.
I’d also be curious to see how James Spann would approach covering a day like this if it were to happen again. I know he’s spoken at length about how he felt that he could have done a better job communicating with the public that day given how many people lost their lives. I thought he did as good of a job as anyone I’ve ever seen. If I ever switch careers and did outbreak coverage like that, I would definitely follow his example.
I think I got back to my dorm around the time that the Tuscaloosa tornado was entering Birmingham and watched that on the weather channel. I also remembering pulling up the NWS site and being shocked at the number of tornado warnings and discrete cells that were happening in real-time.
Something I’ve thought about a lot over the years is I would like to know what this event would look like in this era of rapid-refresh and dual-polarization radar. While we got good looks at a lot of the violent tornadoes that day on radar, we were only getting them every couple of minutes and we were just before the time where CC would come into use.
I’d also be curious to see how James Spann would approach covering a day like this if it were to happen again. I know he’s spoken at length about how he felt that he could have done a better job communicating with the public that day given how many people lost their lives. I thought he did as good of a job as anyone I’ve ever seen. If I ever switch careers and did outbreak coverage like that, I would definitely follow his example.
So yeah, Cordova was likely an EF5 too. That tree damage is just absurd.
TH2002
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I've always suspected Cordova hit EF5 status in Cullman County (an unsurveyed newly built home was swept away, grass was scoured from hillsides, trees were shredded and debarked, a tractor was mangled, a car was thrown 130 yards and a storm shelter collapsed on to its occupants) but that fourth photo of tree damage pretty much seals it for me.
That easily rivals some of the most intense forest damage from the Murphy, NC tornado back in the '74 Super Outbreak.