My name is James Spann. I am the chief meteorologist for the ABC affiliate in
Birmingham, ABC 3340. We're in the problem-solving business; we're trying to
solve a problem of determining the state of the atmosphere up to seven days in
advance so we primarily use computer models. These are dynamic models run by
the National Center for Environmental prediction in Washington DC. We take that
raw data we look at current analysis to go back to analogs, things that have
happened in the past with such a situation and come up with a public forecast that's
the core of what we do we do that multiple times a day.
Yep, boy, that's a big tornado!
You know we have two well-defined tornado alleys in the
United States one is traditional tornado alley that's Oklahoma Kansas North Texas
Dixie alleys it's Alabama in Tennessee in Mississippi and all along we've had
more strong violent tornadoes than traditional Tornado Alley not that we
want to brag on that but you just can't see them very well here because they're
rain-wrapped and we have terrain issues and it just doesn't get as much
publicity as the other ones because we don't have that good chaser video I guess.
Phil Campbell three to 911 I got rotation coming through Phil Campbell right now.
(Unintelligble)
It's headed right at us! Get some place safe!
Two of the main ingredients for tornado
outbreak in the deep south at number one its instability that means air parcels
can rise freely and easily and there's nothing to prevent them from rising all
the way to the top of the tropopause and we had a lot of that the instability
values were just off the chart there was a period where there was a little
capping inversion that prevents those air parcels from rising but when
temperatures heat up the cap goes away and everything just blows up the other
thing it's shear that's the veering of the wind with altitude the winds
typically at the southeast route are at the surface route of the southeast they
veer to the west aloft and that tends to set the updrafts in motion the storm
updrafts in motion and those values were excessively high that day sometimes you
can get too much shear and that tears the updraft apart but we thought the
updrafts would be so strong and so organized and so violent that they would
stay intact and here in this office we have a check list of about 65 parameters
that you look for when you're forecasting a major severe weather or a
tornado event and about 60 of them were in place and that's pretty rare and of
course the day before is the day that you've got to really work on telling
people that there's potential for this you've got to get ready you need to
think about it and do these things so we tried to stretch it out across all these
different platforms the day before to tell people this could be a really really bad day.
That's huge! That's a big tornado!
It's hard to describe that
unless you've been in it and you know it was an ef5 those are quite rare those
are only about 1% of all tornadoes in the United States are EF5s, one in a
hundred that's how rare they are. Those typically tend to be long lasting that
they don't get down and lift up they tend to stay on the ground for for
dozens and dozens of miles. As it came up through Hackleburg it was obvious from
the reports that this thing was about 1 mile wide on the ground.
And the wind velocitys in an ef5 and we didn't know
it at the time because radar the way radar works the beam is aloft you know
tornado's on the ground so we have an idea of the wind velocities at say three
four thousand feet we didn't know at the time but it's clear that the wind
velocity has exceeded 200 miles an hour based on storm reports from the surveys
so you had a one mile wide monster that had done catastrophic damage in
Hackleburg across the Franklin County line came up into Phil Campbell and did
the same type damage there.
Most of the frame homes are taken off the foundation
and when you've got a slab foundation that's basically all you see left is the
slab and some debris and quite frankly a lot of the debris is from another house
in another part of town perhaps. It's a clean white. The trees that are left
standing the debarking process is usually very close to being complete
bark was ripped off the trees in many cases grass was scoured from fields and
you can see that very easily from from even satellite images in some cases
asphalt roads the asphalt was stripped back just rolled back like a piece of candy.
People that were not in an underground bunker did not have a chance
to survive in many cases. We don't really say this on the air because it is such a
rare event that when people hear us say that they feel like there's no hope in
99% of all cases you're fine if you go to a small interior room in the lowest
floor but in the case of an ef5 unless you're underground you often don't have
much of a chance and a tornado is a violently rotating updraft and what
happens in a storm like that those people that are not in an underground
bunker they are taken aloft it's very graphic and it's something that we don't
like to talk about I certainly don't but most people lose their life when they
are aloft in the tornado from the shrapnel wounds because you've got
objects within that tornado pieces of sheet metal and splinters and
glass and boards and bricks and nails and often people when they are aloft are
impaled with these objects and they don't survive and by the time they land
they've lost their life. You have a few instances where some people will live
through that which is just a miracle to me but the loss of life is often just
catastrophic and in many cases there's nothing you could do unless you are in
that underground bunker and unfortunately most of us don't have one of those at our house .
And there were some people that did the right thing
they heard the warning they didn't wait they had a plan they implemented their
plan they did everything right and in some cases people lost their life.
It's a horrible situation but it was just their day we're doing an extensive study with
social scientists to try and figure out why the death toll was so high that day
the death toll statewide was 252 and that is appalling to all of us in this
science I thought the death toll that day should have been about 30 in about
222 cases there was a small room where these folks could have gone that there
was shelter and we're trying to find out what happened there did they not hear
the warning did they ignore it was it apathy but in the case of Phil Campbell
we thought the response was very good but but I mentioned we thought the death
toll should have been about 30 most of those were Phil Campbell and hackleburg
due to the intensity of the tornado but but the one thing you have to remember
violent tornadoes are very very rare that type of tornado is one in a hundred
and tornadoes in themselves are rare you rarely ever have tornadoes, hardly any
storms have tornadoes storms by nature are good where we live without them we'd
be in a constant drought they're a blessing thunderstorms are good
tornadoes are so rare and the odds of that ever happening again are so small
the statistical odd the statistical odds are just so minute that at some point I'd
like to think that maybe the fear will subside because they're going to go
through season after season after season where nothing happens.
Will they have close calls? Yeah but they'll probably be smaller
tornadoes will there be some damage? Yeah if you live in Alabama you'll get
some damage after a while, but it's okay to be afraid but it's something the
point comes in your life where you can't run your life based on fear that's when
you make some bad decisions you run your life based on facts and good information
and the good information is that these things are extremely, extremely rare and that's good.
If you are in a warning, first off be sure you're in the warning
what the one thing I think people are still confused about they think a lot of
people think warnings are still based on counties they're not they're based on
little segments of counties these polygons and if you're not the polygon
you don't need to do anything that that's the beauty of these polygons
tornadoes even the big ones are fairly small compared to a whole County but if
you're clearly in that polygon the basics are small room hall closet
bathroom lowest floor if you've got an up-and-down don't go up you go down near
the center is many walls between you and the outside as you can and away from
windows that's for a site built home a lot of people live in mobile homes in
rural areas and you've got one rule you've got to leave you've got to leave
I don't care what anybody says a mobile home is a deathtrap during a tornado
they offer wonderful affordable housing but they are a deathtrap and you've got
to leave if you're in a car you've got to get out a car and a mobile home are
the two worst places to be.
For whatever reason there's still some people to think today that you should
hear an outdoor warning siren that should be the first way you're going to
get a tornado warning if you're at home if you are at your business if you are
at church that's crazy its total insanity this is World War one
air raid siren technology and here we are in 2012 using that it's not
effective at reaching people inside a building it's horrible
they reach a limited number of people outdoors and
that's it in their days I get so discouraged I
just want to take them all down and burn them and that would force people to do
the right thing but I know that they serve a purpose they serve a limited
number of people but this mentality of thinking that you're going to hear those
things I'm shocked at the number of well-educated people that think that and
that's what's got to stop we had a 16 year old girl that died in
Birmingham January 23rd it was a 4 a.m. tornado pre-dawn tornado this was a 16
year old girl brilliant her whole life in front of her
unlimited potential and she was killed because of the siren mentality and I'll
say this those parents are now very big advocates for what we're trying to
preach is that you've got to stop it you've got to stop it and I don't know
why some people still rely on today but we're going to be very bold and I say we
the professional whether community broadcasters National Weather Service
emergency managers we're going to be very bold in coming months and years
trying to prevent this issue of the siren mentality from being a problem it's going
to kill dozens more if we don't stop it.
We think the baseline ought to be a
weather radio NOAA weather radio that that is a government service is it
perfect no but it works very well you program those weather radios by counties
they're not polygon based yet that's their greatest limitation but still they
work well you program the county where you live it will sound a loud and I mean
a loud alarm in your home and that way you know that part of the county is
under a tornado warning you go turn on the television you find out if you're in
the polygon or not and then you take action according to that that's what
will wake you up at 4 o'clock in the morning that's what gets your attention
when you're not watching television when your family's having dinner so that is
the baseline and then beyond that to me that the beautiful thing we've got are
these smart phone apps with a smart phone app number one it knows where you
are based on the GPS chip and to tell in the phone so if you're in a polygon
warning you get the warning you're alarmed and if you're not you don't in
addition to knowing where you are you can program in fixed locations multiple
fixed locations your home your business your momma's home
whatever that's where it all needs to go but on the other hand we are fully aware
that not everybody can afford a smartphone and quite frankly there are
some that can't afford a $30.00 weather radio. We've got to be sure that
lower-income families have ways of getting warnings as well but but the
smartphone apps are fantastic and there's services that call home phones a
lot of people don't have home phones anymore I don't but but those that do
there are services that call your home phone based on polygons and you get the
warning a lot of older people like that service because they don't travel as
much they can hear their phone and it's just beautiful so above the weather
radio you've got multiple options like the smartphone apps and services that
call your home phone that are really really good
Out of everything else, you know what's been the biggest improvement in terms of
our ability to warn people or not warn people that the storms not severe? It's
social media; everybody has a camera it seems like with their phone most people
have a Facebook account or a Twitter account in the images that we see in
real time during a tornado outbreak are invaluable we can see there's a wall
cloud but there's nothing underneath that you know we can see that the storm
is striated you've got striations it's a rotating up cloud you can see damage
coming off the rear flank downdraft the people taking the picture they probably
don't know this but by golly we do and we can see it in real-time and out of
all of the things I'd say that have happened over the last couple of years
that's probably the most important real-time video and images from people
that are not trained and then you got the trained guys with the live streams and
those are crucial too. I think the two guys that got the live stream of the ef4
below Tuscaloosa those guys were heroes and they never got any credit
John Oshue and Ben Greer you know they were out there in the middle of nowhere
in very difficult terrain showing this EF4, 45 minutes before it came into
downtown Tuscaloosa people will do something if I can show them a live
stream; I show them radar they've seen enough of that.
The false alarm ratio's out of hand. I think part of the reason so many people died I
think a lot of people ignored the warning and a lot of it is our fault we
the false alarm ratios out of hand about 80% of all tornado warnings are false.
We've got to fix that we've got to fix that if you get warning after warning
after warning after warning and nothing happens it's human nature, they're not gonna
do anything those things go off all the time we've got to stop that and I'm
not faulting the Weather Service they're doing what they're told to do their
mandate is to warn for every single tornado and my position is we're not that
good most tornadoes are ef-0 and ef-1 these are tiny little tornadoes it might
last for 60 seconds or 90 seconds they touch down, they're gone
on boom but yet a warning goes out by the time the warning goes out the
tornados gone we're on TV for 45 minutes and there's nothing out there we it's my
position we got to stop trying to catch those little bitty spin up tornadoes in
the long line forget about it use a severe thunderstorm warning say
within the body of the message these might produce a small spin up tornado
that might last for a minute or two let's focus on these big ones that kill
most of the people in this state and if we can do that I think that people will
get serious about it again of course they are now we have a heightened
awareness after what happened but that will fade away but we've got to cut that
false-alarm ratio back that is a big problem and we're working to do that
that's a big there's a big dialogue going on now within the professional
weather community and it's all good where we're going to get better
We're still shocked over that day and as we approach this anniversary it's harder
because all the memories come back and we're having to look at a lot of stuff I
haven't looked at in a long time and
it's just a lot of bad things happen that day and with every bit of strength
in my body for the last part of my career I'm going to work to make the
warning process better I really am.
you