Archive for the ‘Photos’ Category

A very nice sunset that took place after the lingering rain dissipated across Talladega County this evening.  After a dreary day, this was a nice way to end it.  We begin warming back up for the rest of the week and into the mid – upper 90’s by the weekend.

On the way to Destin this evening….we came across some localized flooding in Wetumpka.  Then we were treated with the following mammatus clouds on I-65 south in western Montgomery County.

We have had a very busy 24 hours here in the Alabama Storm Trackers camp with the birth of my baby boy Graham yesterday morning.  He was born at 11:23am and weighed 8lbs. 1oz.  He was also 20" long and was born by c-section.  Mom and baby are doing fine, but things may be a bit slow around here for a bit while we transition toward home on Fathers Day.  Can’t think of a better gift.  Thanks to everyone for the prayers and well wishes during this time of great joy for our family.

-Brett

Going to post up some images of the Shelby County, Alabama storm from 3/25/2010. That was a very busy day and we had multiple storms in northwest Alabama that we intercepted on that occasion. We will also be attempting to pull the multiple interviews that we did on The Weather Channel off the DVR in the coming days.

The Alabama Storm Trackers and Twisted Tours guest Brandon Thomas intercepted the snow storm across sections of Oklahoma on Saturday and Early Sunday morning.  This compact and very deep upper level low developed a deformation band across portions of East and Central Oklahoma last evening and dropped some significant amounts along the I-40 corridor.  Here are a few photos from our trek.  We have more video and photos that we will be posting in the next several days.

This storm has unofficially allow Oklahoma City and many portions of Western Arkansas set the records for their snowiest winter.  It was a truely beautiful scene.  If you are interested in these kind of tours (Winter Weather, Severe Storms, Hurricanes) contact us on the Twisted Tours link at the top of the blog!

I know many of you that dialed up the stream yesterday are wondering what happened or why it wasn’t up and online….so I guess I will post the explanation here.  After apparently making what was a near spot on forecast and a decision to stop in Athens on I-65 yesterday….I was convinced to pack it up and come home early because several forecasters in the Huntsville area continued to “downplay” the event.  I even went as far as the argue with a couple of them.  Anyway, needless to say after staying there for several hours I gave up on my target area and decided to come home around the 3 o’clock hour.  Wouldn’t you know it….when I turn south some 45 minutes later convection explodes right in the expected tornado event area.

After looking at the image, I was rather sick to my stomach.  It probably doesn’t look like much to most of you, but this is basically what we expected.  Low topped supercell thunderstorms developed and packed a punch.  Now, the reports graphic from yesterday.

Some of the cells were massive hail producers with 2.75″ (baseball) sized hail being reported in extreme southern Tennessee around the town of Fayetteville.  To be so low topped and low precipitation….these cells were very intense.  As most of you know….shortly after this radar grab was taken the Huntsville tornado formed.  This tornado was some 10-15 miles east of where I sat all day long waiting on storms to develop.  Again….I was sick to my stomach after seeing all of this. 

After driving home and expecting most of the storms to be north….I was wrong again.  A supercell thunderstorm began to form in southwest Talladega County….just southwest of my house….and I got in on some hail action just after dark.  I was able to take some photos of the tremendous updraft forming west of Sylacauga.

The top two images are of the developing tower to the west….the third image is the moon out ahead of the anvil….and in the final image you can see the pink “roll” clouds way up in the atmosphere.  The is indicative of very strong winds in the upper levels.  These winds allow these storms to vent and become supercells.  This storm didn’t go tornadic in Talladega County, but it did once it moved into Clay, Randolph, and Cleburne Counties.  Again….we live and we learn and next time I will stick to my guns.  At least the forecast panned out. 

When we did stream yesterday….we tried something new with an in car camera giving you a view of what it was like in the chase vehicle.  We may try running several more cams that we can switch through in the future.  Give us your thoughts in the comment section and we will take them into account! 

Source: WAFF

Huntsville Police Department reporting power lines down. Area storm spotters reporting trees down, power flashes.

@ 5:34PM CST HPD reporting confirmed tornado

SEVERE WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HUNTSVILLE AL
531 PM CST THU JAN 21 2010

ALC071-089-220000-
/O.CON.KHUN.TO.W.0001.000000T0000Z-100122T0000Z/
MADISON AL-JACKSON AL-
531 PM CST THU JAN 21 2010

…A TORNADO WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 600 PM CST FOR WEST
CENTRAL JACKSON AND CENTRAL MADISON COUNTIES…

AT 530 PM CST…NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR AND STORM
SPOTTERS WERE TRACKING A TORNADO. THIS TORNADO WAS LOCATED NEAR
HUNTSVILLE…MOVING NORTHEAST AT 20 MPH.

OTHER LOCATIONS IN THE WARNING INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO MOORES
MILL…BROWNSBORO…MAYSVILLE…DEPOSIT AND NEW MARKET.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS…

TORNADOES AT NIGHT ARE ESPECIALLY DANGEROUS. DO NOT WAIT UNTIL YOU
SEE OR HEAR THE TORNADO…IT MAY BE TOO LATE. TAKE COVER NOW.

Well…..as everyone knows we had a bit of a crazy time dealing with the snow forecast today.  We would like to go a little more in detail with you to let you understand exactly why this happened the way it did.  So….here we go.

This is a forecast sounding from a mesoscale model that ran at 3PM today.  On the image above you see two points that are made……one is that a warm nose is present and the second is that there is low moisture in the dendrite layer (snow growth zone).  Basically what you are looking at a vertical profile of the atmosphere on an image.  The green line is the dewpoint line and the red line is the temperature line.  If you notice just around 2000-5000ft above the surface the temperature spikes to the right of the 0 degree Celsius line.  Once the snowfalkes fell through this layer of the atmosphere they were able to melt instead of reaching the surface as snow.  This was a HUGE reason many areas received rainfall today instead of the much advertised snowfall. 

The second area on the sounding indicated is the snow growth region.  The “dendrite” growth region (-10C to -20C region) was not moist at all.  The dewpoint line spikes to the left away from the temperature line which indicates that things are dry within the region.  This is the most favorable area for snow growth and there was no moisture….so when this occurs…you basically end up with the product pictured below.

The end product was sleet and graupel.  The snow grainy type material came later.  Here is a radar image of the time the heavy sleet was falling in my Childersburg, Alabama location.

As you can see, I have highlighted the areas of bright banding where low level thermal profiles were allowing for some sleet to reach the surface.  My GPS icon is located just north of Sylacauga on the image.  Those brighter bands were where sleet was being produced late this afternoon and evening. 

Shortly after this temperature profiles aloft began to “crash” (drop drastically) and we were seeing graupel.  Here is a picture of the graupel that is a little bit whiter than the sleet.

Shortly after this…..the low level thermal profiles finally became supportive of all snowfall across portions of Central Alabama.  The -10C region dropped drastically on the sounding this evening and was able to moisten up and allow more substantial snow growth in the layer.  This allowed for some moderate to heavy snow to develop in bands across Shelby/Talladega/Clay/Coosa/St. Clair/Calhoun Counties.  And here were the results of that…

So, moderate snowfall did prevail this evening and it is causing major problems across portions of East-Central Alabama where roads have become impassable due to icing and numerous wrecks have been reported.  Travel is not recommended through the night time into the day tomorrow until the icing is able to evaporate/melt some.  You must keep in mind….considering that we are in the south and don’t deal with these issues much….salt trucks are not common across most of the region.  Roadways may be dangerous for quite some time.

Here are your final snow totals this evening across the area.  We feel the forecast went pretty well in the final stages given the uncertainties.

We hope that you have enjoyed the coverage that we have tried to provide to you during this event.  We have been overlooking the site numbers and we are very pleased with what we are seeing.  Overall, our goal in getting the word our in our own format has been a success.  We look forward to providing you with more critical information in future events.  Now, back to your regularly scheduled National Championship game in progress.