21 January 2010
Tornado Develops Over Huntsville Thursday
Posted by Dan Satterfield
While we were on air during the 5 PM newscast earlier this evening, a tornado developed just east of our studios. We followed it using our city camera on top of the Saturn 5 at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center here in Huntsville.
Meteorologist Alan Raymond and I saw the flashes from transformers blowing almost immediately as we brought up the camera image, and knew we had a tornado on the ground. We’ve received incredible shots from viewers along with video.
There is significant damage just east of our studios in downtown, but so far no injuries.
You can see some video and more pictures on the WHNT web site here. I will add some more pictures later this evening. The tornado happened during rush hour and was witnessed by thousands of residents. We are just now ending our non stop coverage that began when the tornado touched down during our early newscast.
addition: YouTube video from Huntsville resident Josh Roberson on his iPhone of the tornado forming:
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
Dan,
With all the meteorological software and technology, i can’t seem to understand WHY nobody detected this tornado. It was only identified AFTER people called in reports and camera panned the sky. This certainly worried me, and casts a lot of doubts about all the tools used for detection and tracking.
Actually we did detect it quite well on radar. Once it started developing. You cannot detect something that is not there however and it developed VERY rapidly. It seems very possible that the mountains east of Huntsville played a role in the tornadogenesis with the storm.