My son lives in Tuscalossa, AL. Fortunately, his house was not hit and they are just without electricity but less than a mile a way was destroyed and many people were hurt or killed. Very sad.
I watched that tornado on the Weather Channel yesterday, and it was unbelievably devastating!!! It was a mile and a half wide and total destruction to everything in it's path. Debris was shown falling in Birmingham...19 miles AHEAD of the tornado itself!! We drove right through Oklahoma City, just a few days following the tornadoes in 1999. You can't fathom the destructive power of these things until you see the after-math first hand. Hopefully the worst is over.
One thing I saw that should be an eye-opener for around here...footage on the Weather Channel of a tornado coming down off a mountain about an hour north of Tuscaloosa. This disproves the commonly-held belief that tornadoes don't affect mountain areas; if the conditions are right, they can come through mountainous terrain as well. Although it's not commonplace to have them around here, folks should still heed the warnings when they sound, because you never know...
I tried to call my son in Tuscalossa and can't get through by cell, landline phone or computer. Everything is out. From what we have heard so far, the city was devastated. I don't know what happened at the University of Alabama campus either.
