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Historic Tornado Outbreak April 27, 2011


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I know in the other thread OceanStWx was saying the higher ups, higher than the director of the NWS even, was asking why so many people died. If it was higher than the director of the NWS that tells me its either the Commerce Secy (since the NWS is in the Commerce Dept) or its the President himself. Therefore we are going to see some changes made but I don't know what could have been done in storms of this magnitude and storms that were so prevalent in such heavily populated areas. I do think its a decent idea to consider though sending out authorities with intercoms on the cars alerting people a tornado is coming and to take shelter, especially with a long lead time and when the power is out- but perhaps I am not thinking everything through.

Well I'm not sure the reaction extended that far up the chain, but my guess is that politicians were leaning heavily on department and agency heads for answers as to why so many people died. These politicians of course had no prior knowledge regarding the forecast/warnings and just see the end result.

The service assessment began this week, and what I'm personally hoping comes out of it is a focus on preparedness and response/action. Some of these deaths were inevitable, but I also feel that a number (probably significant) of them could have been spared with better preparedness leading up to and better response during the event.

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Wow, I knew that the injuries included blunt force, etc.....but, the way this sounds it was even worse.

"Efforts to pin down the number of missing have been complicated by factors including multiple reports of the same missing person, or survivors who found shelter without contacting friends who reached out to police. Sometimes the police have only a first name.

"Obviously, there's not a whole lot you can do with that information," Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steven Anderson said Thursday.

Alabama officials are declining to say how many people could be missing statewide, and are now even keeping mum about the state's official death toll as it re-examines the tally. They reduced the figure from 250 to 236 on Monday after accounting for a gruesome fact of the storm: Some victims had been counted more than once because parts of their bodies were found in more than one place.

The work of finding answers for families of the missing falls largely on the search and rescue teams combing the ruins of entire communities that were ripped from their foundations and thrown across hollows and hills on April 27. In Tuscaloosa, officials say at least 41 people were killed when an EF-4 tornado with winds up to 190 mph mowed down some of the city's most densely populated neighborhoods."

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From the tornado damage survey...

IN TWO LOCATIONS...THE TORNADO ACTUALLY GOUGED OUT LARGE SECTIONS OF THE GROUND. IN ONE SPOT IN NORTHEAST NESHOBA COUNTY...THE GROUND WAS DUG OUT TO A DEPTH OF AROUND 2 FEET OVER AN AREA APPROXIMATELY 25-50 YARDS WIDE AND A COUPLE OF HUNDRED YARDS LONG.

That is really impressive.

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  • 2 weeks later...

As posted in the main forum topic...

Here's what I have...

April 27th - 12AM-11:59PM (Local Time)

Tornado Count: 179

Tornado Count Per CWA:

MRX: 51

HUN: 31

JAN: 30

BMX: 29

MEG: 12

FFC: 10

OHX: 9

SHV: 4

LWX: 4

AKQ: 3

GSP: 2

LMK: 2

MOB: 1

RNK: 1

RLX: 1

ILN: 1

CTP: 1

BMG: 1

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  • 3 weeks later...

After being sidetracked for over a month with the historic flooding event and other severe weather...MEG has gotten around to building a much more extensive page for this outbreak...

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/meg/?n=apr2011toroutbreakhome

Included is a lot more detailed information about each tornado. In addition...their CWA-wide tornado count between April 25-27 has been raised from 14 to 21 (mostly just adding EF-0s). The 4/27 count itself is 16.

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  • 10 months later...

Yeah this one might be the real deal. The thing that worries me is that this year analogs 1974's spring the best and with all this actitvity it just seems like something extremely huge is eventually gonna blow up eventually

Probably the best prediction I've ever made right here, a week out. Hopefully we don't get into another one of these patterns but with May coming soon who knows. I'll admit I never thought we'd see another Super Outbreak again. It was just jaw dropping to watch this on the radar and tv. The tornadoes produced by this one were unreal in strength. To see the horizontal vortices on almost every twister, and the shear size and speed that they were all moving and spinning was just incredible

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I can easily say that the EF5s in this outbreak were certainly among the strongest ever from a damage perspective...

The damage in Phil Campbell was scary. This picture legit scared me the first time I saw it. The thing is despite all of our warnings what do you do when an EF-4 or 5 is barreling down on you? People were being sucked out of basements even

5667457100_f259d8e833_z.jpg

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For the record...over on page 50 I said EC's F5 rating for Elie, MB was suspicious. Just recently saw the video of the anchored house being torn off its foundation and thrown hundreds of feet as it explodes. Also saw photos of empty basements left where houses once were. There is surprisinly not a lot of damage photos and videos from that tornado. Sorry EC!

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For the record...over on page 50 I said EC's F5 rating for Elie, MB was suspicious. Just recently saw the video of the anchored house being torn off its foundation and thrown hundreds of feet as it explodes. Also saw photos of empty basements left where houses once were. There is surprisinly not a lot of damage photos and videos from that tornado. Sorry EC!

That video also shows a Pampa-like event where a van is picked up and hurled hundreds of yards from its original location, shortly after the F5 damage to the home. This tornado was one of the kings of the "drill-bit".

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For the record...over on page 50 I said EC's F5 rating for Elie, MB was suspicious. Just recently saw the video of the anchored house being torn off its foundation and thrown hundreds of feet as it explodes. Also saw photos of empty basements left where houses once were. There is surprisinly not a lot of damage photos and videos from that tornado. Sorry EC!

Not a lot of damage photos/videos because of the location it hit, Elie isn't exactly a booming metropolis plus most of your storm chasers chase only in USA which is where the lack of video comes in.

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I can easily say that the EF5s in this outbreak were certainly among the strongest ever from a damage perspective...

I agree, each produced incredible phenomenon.

Smithville: A steel culvert buried underneath a road was actually pulled up through the earth and asphalt and thrown, leaving a section of the road and ground missing. I heard that 3 people were killed when a concrete above ground safe room was torn away. Lots of foundation sweeping.

Phil Campbell/Hackleburg/Tanner: A car was wrapped around a tree and pavement was scoured. Countless homes were swept away, some of which actually had their concrete slabs cracked and scoured. Don't read this next park if you are squeamish...the body count for this one was made difficult because a lot of the victims were found in multiple pieces.

Rainsville: A pickup truck was thrown and obliterated into multiple pieces. An 800 pound steel safe anchored to a home foundation was torn away, thrown 600 feet, and found with it's door torn from it's hinges. A stone pillar was pulled from the ground and smashed to pieces, and some homes actually had their concrete porches torn from the ground, thrown, and broken into pieces.

Philidelphia: I think that this was the most violent tornado of the outbreak. Think about this, the Philadelphia tornado produced the most insane ground scouring I have ever seen, worse than that at Jarrell and Bridge Creek. It actually dug a 2 foot trench in the ground, deeper than the grass and topsoil. Consider that the Jarrell tornado was an F5 and moving much slower, yet still didn't do this. Consider that the Bridge Creek tornado is the considered by some the most violent ever, and it STILL did nothing like this. The Philidelphia tornado was a very fast mover, and was rated EF5 for hitting an open field. Incredible.

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The Philidelphia tornado was a very fast mover, and was rated EF5 for hitting an open field. Incredible.

The Philadelphia tornado was rated EF5 for more than just the ground scouring.

Also, the damage to the Wrangler Plant in Hackleburg was incredible.

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The Philadelphia tornado was rated EF5 for more than just the ground scouring.

Also, the damage to the Wrangler Plant in Hackleburg was incredible.

Yeah jeans from the plant were found in towns far across the state.

The Philadelphia tornado was rated EF5 due to the asphalt and ground scouring, and the fact that cars were wrapped around trees. The structural damage from the tornado was rated low end EF4. The tornado was only upgraded when they found the scouring and vehicle damage.

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It wouldn't be the asphalt scouring, the EF3 in Americus, GA on March 1st, 2007 scoured the pavement. I remember seeing something in the survey for the Philadelphia tornado that said that a mobile home was thrown 300+ yards without any sign of a ground impact in between, after which it was obliterated, with the fatalities occurring here as well.

I've gone through this thread multiple times since I joined the site and it is always a worthwhile read.

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It wouldn't be the asphalt scouring, the EF3 in Americus, GA on March 1st, 2007 scoured the pavement. I remember seeing something in the survey for the Philadelphia tornado that said that a mobile home was thrown 300+ yards without any sign of a ground impact in between, after which it was obliterated, with the fatalities occurring here as well.

I've gone through this thread multiple times since I joined the site and it is always a worthwhile read.

Yeah asphalt isn't all that reliable, I remember hearing about asphalt scouring during the Vilonia EF2 I think. I forgot about the mobile home. That, the cars, and (mostly) that insane ground troughing I think led them to that rating.

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To think that the Moore/Bridge Creek Tornado was a confirmed 318mph (possibly stronger) beast and did not leave any evidence of ground scouring like the Philadelphia tornado did, is just scary...

The appearance of the tornadoes of that day will ALWAYS stick with me for the rest of my life. The insane amount of motion in each one just showed how ridiculous the atmosphere was that day. I have seen dinky little horizontal vorts on EF3+ tornadoes before, but the vorts on these tornadoes MUST have been able to do some sort of damage with how fast they were rolling and how close to the surface they actually were.

Does anyone know if the NWS surverys found anything about this?

post-20-0-52737500-1303934799.jpg

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It wouldn't be the asphalt scouring, the EF3 in Americus, GA on March 1st, 2007 scoured the pavement. I remember seeing something in the survey for the Philadelphia tornado that said that a mobile home was thrown 300+ yards without any sign of a ground impact in between, after which it was obliterated, with the fatalities occurring here as well.

I've gone through this thread multiple times since I joined the site and it is always a worthwhile read.

It was the multiple, large gouges several feet into the ground that led the Philadelphia tornado to being rated EF5.

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Smithville: A steel culvert buried underneath a road was actually pulled up through the earth and asphalt and thrown, leaving a section of the road and ground missing. I heard that 3 people were killed when a concrete above ground safe room was torn away. Lots of foundation sweeping.

Phil Campbell/Hackleburg/Tanner: A car was wrapped around a tree and pavement was scoured. Countless homes were swept away, some of which actually had their concrete slabs cracked and scoured. Don't read this next park if you are squeamish...the body count for this one was made difficult because a lot of the victims were found in multiple pieces.

That was Rainsville. But yes, the EF5 damage from the 4/27 tornadoes was incredible. The Smithville, Hackleburg, and esp. Phil Campbell/Mt. Hope damage was probably some of the more violent (E)F5 damage I've seen. Underground shelters were left exposed. Only 18 homes in Smithville were completely destroyed, but in those there were 16 fatalities. I have heard similarly, that in some areas of Phil Campbell and Rainsville, being in the center of the tornado path without a safe room essentially meant you did not survive. The amount of small debris that was scattered for up to a mile (!) from the source in the Rainsville aerials is incredible.

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