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5 May 2011
Air Force DMSP Weather Satellite Shows The Darkness After The Storms
You’ve probably seen some of the city light images from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, but I have a new one to show you. The image below is a composite of the lights after the tornado swarm in Alabama, on Wednesday April 27th, with the lights seen just before. The lights in red are lights that were usually seen, but were missing after the tornadoes took out all of the …
The Flat Rock Mobile Home
I visited the site of one of the EF 4 tornadoes that hit North Alabama on Monday and came across this mobile home. At least it WAS a mobile home. The original trailer was on those blocks in the picture above and was blown across the road about 70 yards. Not all of the mobile home made it across the road because the metal base got caught by a pine …
4 May 2011
Geo-Eye Image shows Destruction from Tuscaloosa Tornado
GeoEye is a commercial satellite imagery company and they released a high-resolution image showing the damage path from the EF 4 tornado through Tuscaloosa, Alabama on Wednesday April 27. Click the image for a much higher resolution. You can also download an image file for Google Earth showing the track of all the strong tornadoes in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee here. Once you load it into Google Earth you can …
Amazing Image of Rotating Storm Paths from NSSL
This has to be the most amazing image (I’ve yet seen) of the super swarm of tornadoes across the SE USA last Wednesday. Doppler radars are very valuable for severe storm forecasting because they can sense rotation in a storm and this allows for advanced warnings of tornadoes. These radars were not available in 1974, but in 2011 they allowed forecasters to give an average of 24 minutes warning in …
3 May 2011
Tornado Hits Auckland! Alabama EF 5 Track visible from space!
Tornadoes in the Southern Hemisphere mainly rotate clockwise (about 99%) which is just the opposite of those in the Northern Hemisphere. Two fatalities were reported with this tornado, and yes they are very rare in New Zealand. NASA has released an incredible image from the Aqua satellite showing the path of the EF 5 tornado that was on the ground for 132 miles from near Hackleburg, AL to Franklin County, …
2 May 2011
The Most Amazing Storm Survey I’ve Ever Read
A large and deadly tornado, on the ground for 132 miles! This is a little longer than the 130 mile track of the deadly tornado that took a very similar path on April 3, 1974. PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HUNTSVILLE AL 959 PM CDT SUN MAY 1 2011 …LONG TRACK EF-5 TORNADO CONFIRMED ACROSS THE TENNESSEE VALLEY… THIS IS UPDATED INFORMATION CONCERNING CUMULATIVE STORM SURVEY INFORMATION OF …
1 May 2011
Hackleburg, AL Tornado Confirmed an EF-5. (Death toll passes super outbreak of 1974)
A viewer sent me this video (click image to see it) of the tornado that hit Arab, Al. on Wednesday. This is the same tornado that hit Cullman, and was rated an EF-4, but the official rating for Arab is not yet complete. The NWS has brought in the best experts available to get accurate ratings on these tornadoes, and the survey is ongoing. An EF 4 has winds of …
29 April 2011
Incredible Video of Tuscaloosa Tornado
This was posted on YouTube today. This is the likely EF-5 tornado that destroyed part of Tuscaloosa, Al. on Wednesday afternoon. This is what the radar looked like at that moment. The blob south of the hook echo is called a debris ball, and you see this only in very large tornadoes. It’s caused by the radar beam reflecting off of debris in the air around a tornado. …
500,000 without power in North AL
Madison County, AL is in the dark tonight. Every main feeder line into the area was destroyed by the tornadoes yesterday, and you can walk outside and see the sky the way my great grandparents saw it 90 years ago! I am writing this post using the generator that is running the five lights in our studio, and (we are told) no power is likely for at least 4 days. …
28 April 2011
Deadly Tornado Swarm Pounds Alabama
I write this post from a hotel in Birmingham tonight. My flight was diverted coming back from a climate change seminar in Oklahoma and it was one wild ride into Alabama. I rarely get nervous on a plane, but I did this time. My last post was about the high risk outlook from the Storm Prediction Center and it is quite obvious that the warning was a good one. …
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.