Wow ... don't mess with Mother Nature. Gary is glad that you're okay.
Thanks, we were sweating it for a bit. You never know if they're over reacting or not. The weather and news was predicting widespread damage, schools were letting out early and businesses were closing. I haven't seen anything on the storm strength but I would assume that they'll rate the one at JSU a solid F1. F1 & F2 are typical for the area, lots of roof damage, signs down that kind of thing, and they are notorious for skipping (raise up and drop back down).
In 2011 we had the mother of all tornadoes an F4. The scale goes to F12 but they stop counting after F5 because there isn't anything but bare earth left. While the lessor ones tend to travel fast and skip along, an F4 is a lumbering giant with winds of a 190 mph that once it's down it goes for a long ways. This one started in Tuscaloosa and traveled parallel with I-59 to just north of Birmingham, where it veered to the other side of the interstate, and continued to just north of Gadsden, before it finally lifted up and dissipated, a meandering track of destruction almost 150 miles long.
A couple years before the storm, the local tv station in Birmingham had installed live feed cameras at different spots across the state. It was almost as if the tornado was sucking all the rain up, because the skies were clear. We sat mesmerized as we watched this giant slowly advancing in real time. You'd see it behind a building, then it would engulf the building, then all you saw was a foundation where the building once stood. Even concrete block buildings were no match for it. Can't remember all the details, but I think it killed over 60 people that day, and no telling how many injured.
One particular story I remember was a man and two small children in Birmingham that had taken shelter in one of the old claw foot bathtubs. Fortunately for them it was fastened down, because the tornado lifted the house and one of the children a 4 year old up and away. Miraculously the child was found a couple blocks away dazed and little bloody but otherwise fine. The Chief of one the rural departments SW of us, was a weather spotter, got a little to close. It picked him and his truck up and deposited them in the river. Fortunately he escaped. Sadly a man in one of the more expensive developments in Gadsden, knew the storm was coming, and elected to go to a church across the road from him, because it had a basement and his house didn't. The tornado missed his house by inches only causing minor damage, but destroyed the church. The debris fell into the basement and killed the man.
I think the state set a record that day, all told there were 55 separate tornadoes that day in the state. You really didn't know which way to go!
Well, that's without a doubt the single most depressing thing I've heard today!
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