Discussion of April 27, 2011 Outbreak

[ColdFront]

If legit, that's the first photo of this EF5 I've seen that shows it as a wedge further down its path. All the footage I've seen from in Rainsville shows a chaotic multiple-vortex with periodic violent "drillbit" funnels, similar to Cullman or the following year's Henryville early in their paths.

Ringgold as well. The low level shear that day was just bonkers.

It seems like multiple tornados that day, while not as extreme chaotic wise as Cullman and Rainsville, all exhibited vortex breakdown and those wispy octopus-arm funnels. Almost like it took a minute to get established in that insane shear environment.

The birth of the Hackleburg tornado video shows it, Cordova as well. Possibly even Tuscaloosa. There’s a video shot from a Walgreens parking lot in Tuscaloosa before it enters the city where the people recording it thought it “first touched down.” I’ll link it below. However, we know from the survey and the ABC 33/40 video of it when it was still 15-20 minutes away from Tuscaloosa that it was already on the ground. Probably some kind of vortex breakdown and the funnel hadn’t fully condensed again.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Cullman is actually the perfect example of what Rainsville did. What most people don't know is that Cullman absolutely wedged out almost immediately after leaving town:
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Tuscaloosa did the same thing when it reached Birmingham, lots of tornadoes this day in fact started off widely visible and stovepipe and only later on wedged out and became rain-wrapped.

 

[Kds86z]

 

[Grand Poo Bah]

A few days ago, National Geographic uploaded the full episode of their series "Witness to Disaster" about the April 2011 tornado outbreak to their YouTube channel. There are some kind of cheesy digital swirling tornado graphics, but also plenty of real footage (most of which we've seen before) and interviews with both James Spann and Matt Laubhan as well as snippets of their coverage.

Man, these are the types of documentaries I grew up watching. Pretty amazing stuff here. I was surprised how much they undersold Smithville though. Basically none of the footage or images showed any of the actual slabbed houses. Houses with missing roofs are easier to comprehend than bare concrete I guess. The Tuscaloosa section was much better, and just reinforces how dumbfounding it is that it wasn't rated EF5.

 

[andyhb]

Surprisingly, it was a wedge for the majority of it's life, most of the (well-known) footage of it is at the very beginning of it's path:
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...you get the point, I could pull up other media.

Can confirm it was legitimate, it was uploaded in June of 2011 here.

The Rainsville tornado was absolutely a monster beyond Fyffe, perhaps the most "angry looking" tornado of the day overall.

 

[NorthGaWeather]

The photo may be real or AI, but it matches the numerous pictures and videos of the tornado that I’ve seen near Henagar, Ider and rural Dekalb County. I don’t know how many of those are online but it was fairly well documented past Rainsville.

Edit: I see a few have made this point already.

 

[Central Ohio Wx]

The photo may be real or AI, but it matches the numerous pictures and videos of the tornado that I’ve seen near Henagar, Ider and rural Dekalb County. I don’t know how many of those are online but it was fairly well documented past Rainsville.

Edit: I see a few have made this point already.

It's not AI; the original was first published in June of 2011 here.

 

[NorthGaWeather]

Ringgold as well. The low level shear that day was just bonkers.

I haven’t seen it publicly available, but Catoosa County Fire and SO have some amazing dashcam footage of the tornado. There is also video from school security cameras.

Replica of the Rainsville tornado as it crossed 35 east of town.

 

[NorthGaWeather]

It's not AI; the original was first published in June of 2011 here.

I just got to the confirmation post. It didn’t look AI, but you never know nowadays.

 

[JPWX]

Smithville was undersold because it's a small town which is sad. I was looking thru old pics I took after it came thru a few days ago. I'm just glad a couple of people like Nelson Tucker and Celton Henderson have done marvelous work at putting more emphasis on the Smithville tornado.

 

[Grand Poo Bah]

Smithville was undersold because it's a small town which is sad. I was looking thru old pics I took after it came thru a few days ago. I'm just glad a couple of people like Nelson Tucker and Celton Henderson have done marvelous work at putting more emphasis on the Smithville tornado.

I think most enthusiasts have Smithville in their top 3 all time most powerful tornadoes list.

 

[warneagle]

Smithville was undersold because it's a small town which is sad. I was looking thru old pics I took after it came thru a few days ago. I'm just glad a couple of people like Nelson Tucker and Celton Henderson have done marvelous work at putting more emphasis on the Smithville tornado.

I feel like this is something that also carries over into documentaries covering the outbreak, like the recent one from NatGeo. They spent about half the documentary talking about Tuscaloosa, and as far as I remember, didn't even mention Rainsville or Philadelphia at all. I get that they're gonna gravitate to the storm that affected the most people and that produced the really striking tower cam footage, and you can't possibly get all of the big tornadoes of a day like that into a 45-minute documentary, but I feel like it does a disservice to the event to just not talk about some of the most intense tornadoes at all.

 

[Grand Poo Bah]

I feel like this is something that also carries over into documentaries covering the outbreak, like the recent one from NatGeo. They spent about half the documentary talking about Tuscaloosa, and as far as I remember, didn't even mention Rainsville or Philadelphia at all. I get that they're gonna gravitate to the storm that affected the most people and that produced the really striking tower cam footage, and you can't possibly get all of the big tornadoes of a day like that into a 45-minute documentary, but I feel like it does a disservice to the event to just not talk about some of the most intense tornadoes at all.

They talked about Philadelphia and Rainsville briefly, then Cullman, Hackleburg, Smithville, and Tuscaloosa. Definitely not bad for a short documentary. You gotta dig pretty deep to find just how devastating tornadoes like New Wren, Pine Log, Flat Rock, Lake Martin, and Ringold were. There's just very little documentation on most of those.

One thing these broadcast TV documentaries always fail to do is convey the incredible nature of some of the damage. I never understood grewing up how some tornadoes just erase homes from existence and leave behind only splinters and small chunks.

 

[Grand Poo Bah]

Props to Swegle studios. He just released his summary of events 5 days ago and it's very in depth and thorough. Much better than the Nat Geo one.

 

[Central Ohio Wx]

I think most enthusiasts have Smithville in their top 3 all time most powerful tornadoes list.

Interestingly I've actually seen the sentiment around this tornado switching recently in online circles - I think more people are starting to move it down to 4 or 5 as more is discussed about both trenching and the construction of some of the buildings in it's path. Certainly still top 5 and by no means forgotten, although most news outlets will move on from most tornadoes anyways, including ones like Philadelphia and Rainsville.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

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The Rainsville tornado was absolutely a monster beyond Fyffe, perhaps the most "angry looking" tornado of the day overall.

Found this forgotten vid of Rainsville: the rapid forward speed and rotation on the funnel are apparent. Disclaimer for annoying music:

 

[Kds86z]

 

[Central Ohio Wx]

150? It was closer to 120, shorter than Cordova’s path.

 

[Kds86z]

150? It was closer to 120, shorter than Cordova’s path.

Yeah I was like huh lol ..

 

[Tennie]

Yeah I was like huh lol ..

I wonder if the numbers were typed with a keyboard's number pad (usually on the right-hand side of most physical keyboards that feature them). On those, the "2" is usually immediately below the "5". If you're not sufficiently careful, you could accidentally type the wrong number--and if you don't check your work sufficiently before sending out your message, well...