Here we are on November 15, 2006, looking at the possibility of a significant outbreak of severe thunderstorms across Alabama. That was also the case exactly 17 years ago today.
On Wednesday, November 15, 1989, I was the chief meteorologist of WBRC-TV here in Birmingham. It was only my third week back on the air in Alabama after being away for five years (I was the primary weather anchor at WVTM-TV from 1979 until 1984)… and it was a busy day in the weather office as we expected. Through mid-afternoon, only one tornado had touched down in the state; it was down in Clay County near the community of Mellow Valley.
By late afternoon, a long squall line had entered Northwest Alabama, and it looked like the threat was shifting to damaging straight line winds with the line. But, one isolated storm merged with the squall line just southwest of Huntsville on the Redstone Arsenal property, and within minutes an F4 tornado was moving through the southern part of the city. The twister tore through Memorial Parkway during the peak of afternoon traffic, killing 21 people; twelve of those who died were in cars. Another 463 were injured.
The following day, we did our newscasts live from the tornado zone in Huntsville at 12:00 noon, 5:00, and 6:00. I will never forget doing the weather live during that midday newscast as a heavy snow squall moved over the city; the snow was so heavy you could barely see across the street. Add in the incredible tornado damage and the whole day was surreal. I almost froze to death.
It was unfortunate that the tornado warning for this storm came a little too late. A severe thunderstorm warning was in effect for Madison County, but this was before Doppler Radar was in use and conventional radar simply didn’t give any good clues about what was going on with the cell merger and the rapidly forming tornado. We sure hope and pray we won’t have an F4 tornado today, but we can be thankful for technology like Doppler Radar and our SKYCAM network, and volunteers like our new Skywatcher team… we dare an F4 to get through today without a good warning!
