I remember about a week ahead of time. All of us were getting together talking
about it because it looked bad on everything. We were looking at all the
computer models and everything. And then from that day, let's say that was
seven days out every succeeding day, some other piece of evidence came in
that made it look all the more sure that it was going to happen and be bad.
And this kept going right up to the day of the event. Then we had the morning
storms and then they set up a special sounding from the National Weather
service in cholera and it showed spin values or Hollis city is the term we
use being through the roof. And at that point is when I told our news director
at the time, I said, this looks to be historic. I mean this number is
completely out of hand and I just think we're gonna be in for a horrible
afternoon at night. If you think back to the really bad events april 3rd 1974
which hit mostly northwest Alabama Marion county included though also hit
walker county very badly and uh some surrounding areas fe county to um and
that was a terrible terrible night between 80 and 85 people lost their
lives. Um And then you can go to Smithfield 1977 that was one tornado
though it wasn't an outbreak like the april 3rd of 74 was. And so you go
through periods in which is really busy and agitated and you will get Maybe
several outbreaks but there's always one that stands out kind of and it
seems like it is generational, you know every 2030 years, something like that
at some point it will happen again, we know that and that's why we talk about
safety effects. You know, one of the things I remember from that day too
going through the morning and then leading into the afternoon stuff, it
was all meteorological, you know, you're looking at all the maps and the
computer models on the radar. It became visceral for me, I forget the exact
time, but it probably is about when Pleasant Grove was being hit and maybe
Pratt city. But I remember photojournalists Jamie Bryant came in
from the parking lot and he's he's carrying building materials. He had
shingles and uh roof insulation and stuff like that. And he brought it over
to me and the chroma key
and that's when it hit me. And it went from being scientific or meteorological
to being personal. You realize at that point that people's lives were being
torn apart and it was so hard from that point on to look at it any other way.
Um and you kind of knew that's what was happening. But then when you see that
kind of evidence and keep in mind as the crow flies, we were a good 567
miles from where the tornado was, it might have been hitting Pleasant Grove
And that stuff goes up in the chimney and then gets taken out all over the
place some distance away from the tornado that that happened about the
time we saw the big storm north of the high rises. The warnings have improved
since I've been in the business. I mean it's totally turned around. It's hard
to believe it back up through uh the early 1950s, not only did the weather
service not issued tornado warnings, they were forbidden to issue them.
There was a rule saying don't even try don't do it because we can't do it. And
a few of the meteorologist, one of whom became a real uh favorite of mine on
philadelphia television for a while. While Liikanen kept insisting, no, we
can at least make an effort at this. We may not be very good at the beginning,
but we'll get better. And they did some tests, forecasts at some places in
Oklahoma and they were okay. And that started it all. And later on after, um,
wister Massachusetts was hit by a terrible storm in 1954. And in those
days, so much of the political clout in the country was over the Northeast.
They're like, we can't have this happen and that's when the storm prediction
center was born. So whether history has changed so much and I'll tell you, I'm
amazed at what everybody is able to do now in terms of forecasting, it's so
much better than it used to be. And perhaps just as importantly as being
accurate with the tornadoes is avoiding those situations which are not
tornadoes, the false alarm rate or the perceived false alarm rate, They've
made a tremendous effort to get better at that. And we know, I mean if you
issue too many warnings of anything, it becomes like wallpaper, you just live
with it and you don't pay attention to it. So you have to limit the number of
cases in which you issue a warning and there's no tornado. And I think they've
done a very good job. My hats off to the weather service, I know they worked
very hard during these events and now they work so hard after them with the
storm surveys that goes on for days, if not weeks. So just think about the
easiest way to get from your bedroom to the basement. If you do that ahead of
time, it may not be so much panic time when the actual storm comes and then
when a warning is issued, what you don't want to do is take some time to
figure out where the storm is and what not. If a warning is issued for your
area we want you to get to your place of safety right away. Now if you're
there in your place of safety and you have a tv you can watch have a NOAA
weather radio. That's great. But get there first that make that priority
number one of course in the old days we told people to open up all the windows.
We know that makes no difference. So just ignore all that kind of stuff. If
you have a bicycle helmet, a motorcycle helmet, a football helmet, have that in
your place of safety because that can really protect you. You know, you just
thought back to two earlier in the day after we saw Cahaba hei skid hit and so
forth. Um, and the morning admittedly was under forecast, we didn't expect it
to be that bad. We knew there was some threat, but we didn't think it would be
that bad. And then just the pieces of evidence kept building to making it
worse and worse. And then when you see all this damage and then you start
hearing about the loss of life and what not, uh it makes your heart sick
because you you think, wasn't there something more I could have done um to
see that tremendous loss of life. I mean from a human standpoint, That was
probably the worst day Alabama has ever had. I mean, there was the storm back
in 1920 that killed more people, but in 1920 there were no TVs, there were no
weather radio. The weather service didn't forecast tornadoes. There was
hardly any telephones really when you think about it And over 300 people
passed away. But given our level of technology now to lose over 200 people
in one event, it just made you sick. I remember about a week and a half later,
no arrived. National Weather Service arrived and we all went into the
conference room and we talked a bit back and forth. There were several
meteorologist,
A couple of us were here from the station and after about 10 minutes he
said, all right, everybody put their pens and pencils down and he just said,
why did so many people die that day? And because they were shocked because
the weather service, frankly, in terms of warnings, I don't think they could
have done a better job. It was incredible. It was amazing. And uh, I
think everybody, all the stations did a great job of communicating it and to
still lose that many people, but we have to realize that highly populated
areas being hit by that kind of strength of tornadoes doesn't happen
very often. You can get an EF four tornado if it stays over the
countryside, it doesn't really do anything. Um, but you had Tuscaloosa,
the Shoal Creek Valley. All these places were hit directly Pratt City. Um
I remember going to Pratt City a few days after the storm hit and I was in
tears. I mean it just looked like houses were just picked up and thrown
away um and just feel bad for all the people and what they were going through.
I think it had been long enough since that kind of an event happened. It's
kind of like the pandemic, frankly, you know, it's the the previous one goes so
far back 100 years, none of us have any experience with it. And in the case of
tornadoes very quickly people move on. Well you have to you have to move on
with your life. And I just think it's the kind of thing that doesn't happen
that frequently and so it's easy to lose your bearings and and to realize
you know, how serious it can be. The other thing is this this might be the
one thing we can still work on in terms of forecasting
Occasionally we may Miss Anne F0 or F one tornado And hopefully no one gets
hurt.
And that's not necessarily all bad because if we warn for every one of
those weak tornadoes, it does to some extent dilute the really bad days on
April 27 every meteorologist wanted everybody to heat every warning. We
wanted everybody to change their plans and so forth. You can't do that on a
day in which there's a marginal risk because there were so many days of the
year. You don't do anything, your kids don't go to school, you don't go
grocery shopping, you don't go to work. Um So we've got to find a way to
delineate the really terrible days in which you've got to do something from
the days that are very, very slight risk. I think we've done a tremendous
job. People here are very resilient. I mean we, from a weather standpoint, we
put up with a lot. We do. There are a lot of places in the country that have
a bad season of some kind. Maybe it's tornado season, maybe it's hurricane
season, maybe it's the wintertime with snowstorms. We kind of have it all year
long. I mean most september days are very nice, but every once in a while a
hurricane comes up in september and I think people have recovered very nicely
and having uh taking my car around a little bit, the most heartening thing,
I was seeing a new storm shelter that's about a half mile from where we're
standing now. So people took action and they'll be ready for the next one.
Going into that shelter will save their lives that there's a bad tornado again,
that's not an advantage they had 10 years ago.