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I have always been a weather nerd since I was a kid. I was always fascinated by the weather.

I was notorious for when our family went on vacation, I always tuned into the Weather Channel and watched the wall-to-wall weather forecasts. (Looking back, I think that also fostered an interest in jazz music as well as they always played smooth during the 36-hour local forecasts.)

I also remembered watching James Spann, Jerry Tracy and others growing up in the Birmingham area. I was always fascinated by the tornado coverage. The first time I remembered that was in 1994 when an F-4 tornado struck Piedmont on Palm Sunday morning. It hit during the middle of the service at Goshen United Methodist Church.

Later, I was huddled around a television at our church during Wednesday night service watching Spann give live coverage of the Oak Grove-McDonald’s Chapel F-5 tornado that killed over 30 people. 

I mention the latter because one of the analogs for our severe weather outbreak over the weekend. Just like that day, we were placed in a high risk. All of the ingredients appeared to be in play for a significant outbreak. 

While the outbreak obviously will never compare to the 2011 Super Outbreak on April 27, 2011, there were a lot of similarities to 1998 tornado outbreak. The only difference is that we didn’t have a major tornado strike in a heavily populated area like we had on that Wednesday night.

However, plenty of places around the state experienced their “April 27th” as Spann likes to say. That was true especially here in Plantersville. The devastation that I witnessed is the worst that I have personally seen since that super outbreak 14 years ago. At Lovelady Drive, it appeared like the storm may have been at its peak intensity. It appeared to me that it was about a half-mile wide, and NWS confirmed that it was 1,000 yards wide at its peak packing winds of 140 mph.

If you can believe it, that was slightly stronger than the tornado that struck in Selma over two years ago, and that storm damaged or destroyed a large percentage of the buildings in Selma. 

I am not trying to say that someone gets it worse than others, because that’s not the case. Even an EF-0 can do a lot of damage if it hits your home or business.

The good news is that the community will always be there for you to help you in your time of need. And that’s one of the best parts of living in Alabama.

 

Brent Maze is the publisher of the Demopolis Times. He can be reached at brent.maze@demopolistimes.com.