Tornado Watch until 4 pm, CDT, covers 18 counties in West and North Alabama. Also included is a very large area of Mississippi, Central and East Tennessee and Northeast Louisiana. The watch mentions the possibility of not only tornadoes, but hail up to 1.5 inches in diameter and wind gusts in thunderstorms as high as 70 mph.
The Alabama counties:
Colbert
Cullman
Fayette
Franklin
Greene
Hale
Lamar
Lauderdale
Lawrence
Limestone
Madison
Marion
Morgan
Pickens
Sumter
Tuscaloosa
Walker
Winston
While this watch does not include the immediate Birmingham area, it does include counties as nearby as Tuscaloosa, Walker and Cullman.
This implies that the main risk of severe weather for the immediate Birmingham area would be mid to late afternoon. However, please remember that individual storms can develop out ahead of the main line of thunderstorms. These individual storms are often the strongest.
Another caution. I saw a comment on the blog earlier today that since it was “only a slight risk” that there was nothing to it. Please remember, we can have significant damage in a slight risk.
STORM LOCATIONS JUST BEFORE 11 AM
There were a few over NW Alabama but by far, the main line of storms extended from West and Middle Tennessee into the NE corner of Mississippi, then across North and West Central Mississippi into Louisiana. Strongest storms in that line were in Tennessee.
We will update as needed all day and into tonight.
