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Severe WX Severe Weather Threat Jan 12th, 2023

TH2002 said:
Not trying to derail this thread too much, but YouTube in general is pretty much unusable these days - looking for documentation of tornado events, recent or past, brings up mostly garbage in the search results now. It's one of the reasons why I've recently found myself relying on other websites more and more to find tornado footage, and obviously TalkWeather is my go to for following severe weather events in real time.
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I've noticed the same problem. So much AI clickbait garbage, or media video covered in watermarks and news logos. When you find good raw video, feel free to post it here.
 
Honestly unless one is following the channels of specific chasers it's hard to find tornado footage at all - home video especially has become almost outright impossible to find; I remember many years ago you could go easily find dozens of home/non-chaser videos after a big event, and now it's 99% news channel damage clips or non-relevant stuff, it sucks
 
Equus said:
Honestly unless one is following the channels of specific chasers it's hard to find tornado footage at all - home video especially has become almost outright impossible to find; I remember many years ago you could go easily find dozens of home/non-chaser videos after a big event, and now it's 99% news channel damage clips or non-relevant stuff, it sucks
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Artificially promoting mainstream media and other corporations over independent creators (in this context, chasers and local residents/eyewitnesses) is just one of the many ways Google has run YouTube into the ground in recent years.

If I ever do get around to true storm chasing, I'll probably set up a channel on Odysee or Dailymotion...
 
Equus said:
Honestly unless one is following the channels of specific chasers it's hard to find tornado footage at all - home video especially has become almost outright impossible to find; I remember many years ago you could go easily find dozens of home/non-chaser videos after a big event, and now it's 99% news channel damage clips or non-relevant stuff, it sucks
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I've mentioned several times recently that my favorite YouTuber for severe weather forecasting/analysis is currently Trey Greenwood (Convective Chronicles). He doesn't sensationalize and make flashy thumbnail graphics plastered with clickbait words like "extreme" and "historic" for every setup that comes along.

Also mentioned before that two of my favorite chasing videographers currently and for a long time have been Skip Talbot and "Pecos" Hank Schyma, for their generally calm, professional approach to chasing as well as their quality video.

Also as an aside about how much YouTube sucks now, I have a couple of friends whose main hobby is collecting and restoring vintage electric fans, primarily ceiling fans. For one of them, one of his regular projects is making "performance" videos of each fan in his collection. He wires them to a rig he built that can power the fan with an almost infinitely variable combination of capacitor values, and hooked to a meter to measure its electrical performance on each speed. Although I don't collect, I occasionally join him for "fan test days" and make my own videos at the same time.

As a result, every time I use the YouTube app on my phone, in that stupid "Products You Might Like" section that they stick in your feed now, is a bunch of ads for ceiling fans. Like I would ever buy any of the junky home center fans being made today.

On topic: Washington Post article (apologies if it's behind a paywall, they're getting more aggressive about not letting people read articles, even a few, if you're not a digital subscriber) about today's tornadoes, although I don't think it contains much we don't already know.
 
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Clancy said:
TOR for that Macon storm.
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My wife and I woke up to the tornado warning alert.
We watched the storm from our back porch since it was not heading towards us.
Locals news channel has a couple pics of a funnel cloud from near where we live, but I do not know if it touched down (or if it did for how long).
If it did touch down it was not long lasting since the damage reports locally are minimal compared to the damage reports shown locally in the April 2022 tornadoes.
 
Had a look at some of the damage pics and vids from James Spann's twitter page. No high-def pics so details were lacki8ng but it seems that most of the damage in Selma was to old houses with toe-nailed roof rafter connections which is fairly weak even when done well and quite weak when 'slapped together'. Also some of those homes didn't seem to be of good quality either. I won't guess a rating number but there it will be low even if it's higher elsewhere.

The damage in Autauga is more significant and some of those structures did seem to be well constructed but again lack of visible details renders that rating uncertain too. There seems to be a lot of mobile homes there which will make the damage more widespread. It will be interesting to see clearer pics and the survey details, especially in Selma.
 
cyelle21 said:
Hi Everyone, I am from Selma, AL...does anyone know what the strength of that tornado was that came through Selma? It looks like a complete war zone. I have several friends whose houses were completely destroyed. It's so devastating!
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Probably know more about the rating this evening after the survey teams investigate today.
 
Sawmaster said:
Had a look at some of the damage pics and vids from James Spann's twitter page. No high-def pics so details were lacki8ng but it seems that most of the damage in Selma was to old houses with toe-nailed roof rafter connections which is fairly weak even when done well and quite weak when 'slapped together'. Also some of those homes didn't seem to be of good quality either. I won't guess a rating number but there it will be low even if it's higher elsewhere.

The damage in Autauga is more significant and some of those structures did seem to be well constructed but again lack of visible details renders that rating uncertain too. There seems to be a lot of mobile homes there which will make the damage more widespread. It will be interesting to see clearer pics and the survey details, especially in Selma.
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Yes, some of the historic homes were damaged or destroyed. It barely missed my mom's house...it took down all of the power poles and trees on their street and surrounding area. It literally looks like a bomb dropped on our town. I have friends with newer houses that were completely destroyed. I'm curious as to what they will rate the strength of the tornado.
 
cyelle21 said:
Yes, some of the historic homes were damaged or destroyed. It barely missed my mom's house...it took down all of the power poles and trees on their street and surrounding area. It literally looks like a bomb dropped on our town. I have friends with newer houses that were completely destroyed. I'm curious as to what they will rate the strength of the tornado.
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Thanks for the report, glad you and your mom are safe!
 
cyelle21 said:
Yes, some of the historic homes were damaged or destroyed. It barely missed my mom's house...it took down all of the power poles and trees on their street and surrounding area. It literally looks like a bomb dropped on our town. I have friends with newer houses that were completely destroyed. I'm curious as to what they will rate the strength of the tornado.
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Would you know about what year those newer houses were built? I am a builder and that's my hobbyist field of tornado study. Also were they completely flattened, some interior walls standing, most exterior walls standing etc would be close enough to roughly determine what the rating might be.

Phil
 
What a chaotic day yesterday. This is one of the most significant and rapid mesoscale forecast changes I've ever seen. We went from veered SFC winds and 800 CAPE to backed SFC winds, 1200-1400 CAPE, and a much more discrete mode overnight. Overall, I put zero blame on the NWS or local mets for this event being underforecasted. CAMs failed us on this setup. Another thing I noticed was that the VB (veer-back) below 3km that was very evident early in the day became basically non-existent in AL, which is why we went from brief, intense tornadoes to long-trackers. The abating of VB was also not something that was forecast at all.

For those of you who don't know what veer-back is, i recommend reading this thread. VB, sometimes called VBV, refers to winds switching from veering to backing aloft, resulting in negative SRH in the column. This can be beneficial for venting purposes, but the tl;dr of the linked thread is that VB under 3km encourages fast cycling and transient structures while VB over 3km can even be beneficial for both tornadogenesis and longer-track mesos.
 


Not sure if this has been posted already, but this video of the brick building partially destroyed is definitely some of the more intense damage I have seen from Selma so for. Obviously depends on many different factors especially construction, but from a quick look does look potentially EF2/EF3 damage. From what I have seen so far, the damage in Selma is slightly reminiscent to me of the style (not intensity) of damage in Mayfield. A large tornado going over the town, with some houses seeing what looks like minor damage and some buildings much more heavily impacted. (Let me stress again I am only referring to the style of damage, Mayfield KY was a lot more intense than anything I have seen so far from Selma, not to diminish the horrible destruction that occurred in both places.)
 
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