Update on Yesterday's Devastating Storms

Update: Death toll now 231 (11:49 EST)

Update: Death toll now over 200 (I've heard both 202 and 213)

Rdbrewer sends along a vid of a Tuscaloosa weatherman covering the tornado live as it hit the city. You might say he's a bit animated over events.

Reminder: Comments go down briefly whenever a post is updated and reappear when a new comment is added. So don't worry that they've all been deleted or something.

Added:It's been suggested in the thread that maybe there should be a separate disaster preparedness thread but The Big Guy would probably disagree. It's closely enough related to the main topic to keep them combined in one. Pixels cost money yannow. Besides, you guys are doing fine with the ones you've already added.

More Added: My 2 cents: Awhile back I was looking around at various disaster prep and survivalist sites (because the Zombie Apocalypse is nigh) and ran across this one called Secrets of Survival. It's run by a friendly "End of Days" sorta' guy and he offers tips for surviving all sorts of nasty things, including tornadoes. Also has tons of links to other handy sites and references. Most of his tornado advice was pretty sound but I felt he'd left a few things out and on others I completely disagreed with. So I sent him some suggested additions and corrections, which are available here.

What makes me Mr. Smarty McSmartpants on the subject? Well, I grew up here which experienced this in 1999 (F-5), this in 2003 (F-4) plus several others over the years. (Though I wasn't actually living there at the time the two Big Ones hit).

Original Post:

Currently the death toll is 173 or 178 depending upon the source. That will most certainly go higher as the sun is just now coming up in some of the hardest hit areas. Now the search and rescue (and sadly, recovery) efforts can get underway in earnest.

The Weather Channel has a sizeable number of videos of many of the tornadoes, including that monster that hit Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, AL. There's been some speculation that this particular tornado may vie with The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 in terms of the tornado with the longest continuous track (219 miles).

It'll take some time to determine that, along with the Enhanced Fujita Scale ratings as damage assesment teams from NSSL, among others, are able to get into the field.

More severe weather is expected today (and in fact is already occurring in places) but the hope is that the atmospheric conditions aren't quite as "ripe" for tornadoes as they were yesterday. If nothing else, the system has a lot less ground to chew up before it heads out to sea. Then again, it'll pass through some heavily populated areas along the coast so that's probably of little comfort, especially if you live in one of those areas.

Updates and additional links to follow and I'll bump this post in case NWS issues any Tornado Emergencies.

Below the fold are the resource links I had tacked on to yesterday's tornado thread:

Here's a site called Severe Studios which features a number of livestreaming storm chasers at various locations around the country. They drop in and out often depending on conditions so refresh occasionally to see if anyone's actually on a tornado. Or to see what might be headed your way.

Some additional resources you might want to stay tuned to:

The Weather Channel though I don't think they're livestreaming.

Weather Underground (Not the radical 60s group) Also not livestreaming but have really good, up-to-date Nexrad maps.

Finally, while not a single source, most TV stations in even the medium-est of markets seem to have their own live storm coverage, helicopters and so forth:

You can find all of them here.

You'll forgive me if I don't feel like adding on an Integrative Complexity thingy.

posted by Genghis at 08:25 AM

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