For most of today, showers and thunderstorms have been no-shows for a large part of North/Central, Central and South Alabama. That will change as the afternoon goes on and especially by late this afternoon and tonight.
At midday, some scattered showers and storms developed over NE Alabama from about Anniston to Ft. Payne. They moved eastward into NW Georgia, but some other moderate to strong storms were in progress over Cherokee County in NE Alabama.
Some strong thunderstorms also moved into extreme North and NW Alabama this afternoon. The National Weather Service in Huntsville issued Significant Weather Alerts for part of Limestone and Madison Counties. At 1:43 p.m., NWS upgraded the storm in Madison County to a Severe Thunderstorm Warning. It is for NW Madison County. Doppler radar indicated a severe thunderstorm that could be producing penny-size hail and damaging winds over 60. It was located near Elkdale and moving east at 28. It will affect such communities as:
Gladstone
Toney
Hazel Green
Fisk
Meridianville
ELSEWHERE IN THE USA
Wanted to mention a very interesting weather feature that has been going on across the Upper Midwest. A dereco has been moving rapidly east from Southern Minnesota and now getting close to the Chicago area. A dereco is a family of unusually severe thunderstorms and usually a bow echo that moves east rapidly causing widespread damage. This one today has produced winds between 80 and 115 mph and has uprooted untold numbers of trees. It may figured in a plane crash south of Minneapolis that claimed at least 7 lives.
Any time you see a fast-moving bow echo, we can almost guarantee damaging winds. A bow echo is where the center of the line of thunderstorms bulges out or races out ahead and thus the curve bow echo.
I don’t remember the exact date, but it was 8 or 10 years ago when we tracked one all the way from East Mississippi through the Birmingham area one afternoon. We were doing a continuous radio broadcast warning that thousands of trees would be uprooted and advised people to get off the streets and take shelter. When the line roared into Birmingham, it did just that. At the time, ABC 33/40 had wind instruments mounted on the press box at Legion Field. Those instruments recorded a wind gust of 99 mph.
