Over Three Inches Received at Sheridan Wednesday

Over three inches of rain was received after midnight Wednesday morning in Sheridan. Around 2 1/2" was received during the night hours and river banks got high. Ravenwood received around 1.3" while Grant City received around 1.5 to 2" that morning depending on location. The area was on the northern edge of a storm that dumped tornadoes in Kansas City that day. Nobody from around the area was hurt.

Later that day, it rained hard for an hour in the afternoon, hitting Grant City the hardest after it had cleared up and the sun came out that morning. The high river caused large trees to fall into the river; tree debris got hung up in the Isadora Bridge along Route 46 causing highway crews to come out and use a large crane to remove the debris.

Relief efforts continued for the Joplin tornado with a local crew with relief supplies headed up by Karen Fletchall going to that community. Tornadoes also struck Oklahoma City and other parts of that state Wednesday afternoon as the Weather Channel had on the ground coverage with spotters chasing the storm.

A Report from Tuscaloosa’s Ground Zero

By Dr. Earl Tilford

The Warrior River borders the University of Alabama campus, separating old Tuscaloosa from up-scale housing developments to the north. Tuscaloosans know a “north of the river” address connotes six-figure incomes. The schools, public and private, are excellent. It’s the country club set. The Warrior River forms a barrier separating Tuscaloosans by class and largely, although not entirely, by race.

The tornado missed the University of Alabama but stampeded through off-campus student housing; old homes converted into apartments or new, multi-story apartment buildings. Students are among the nearly 50 confirmed fatalities and many of the 400 still unaccounted for. The tornado then tore into Alberta City.

Alberta City expanded eastward toward Birmingham. As African-Americans moved in, white residents relocated, many of them north of river. Since moving to Tuscaloosa three years ago, I’ve crossed the Warrior River almost daily, and all but two or three times, I turned right onto the campus of the university or headed west into the old and prosperous downtown.

The tornado devastated Alberta City and took with it the service-industry jobs upon which many of its residents—those who had jobs—depended. Many of the homes in Alberta City were uninsured. Its residents, people with so little, lost what little they had.

North of the river, we lost electrical power for a day or so. When it came back on at 4:00 a.m. on Friday, I saw the scenes of obliteration. On Saturday, I joined a group from a Presbyterian Church in Birmingham who came to Tuscaloosa to cook hamburgers and hot dogs. A few members from First Presbyterian in Tuscaloosa showed up to help. The call had gone out for water, diapers, clothing, shoes, and other necessities.

When I crossed the river, at first everything seemed fine—a few trees here and there uprooted. I turned off the Jack Warner Parkway onto Helen Keller Boulevard and headed for University Boulevard where a left turn would take me into Alberta City. At the roadblock I explained to a police officer that I was joining a group cooking food for victims. He told me to park and walk the rest of the way. I parked and started the mile-long trek into the heart of devastation.

As soon as I turned west, I was in the middle of rubble. I walked by a used car lot with half the vehicles gone. A Mustang was impaled on the shaft of a tree nearby. A Ford Crown Vic was upside down on top of what used to be a pawn shop. I stopped in front of a Cadillac sedan with four flat tires, a missing hood and a tree limb through the driver’s side window. A sticker on the windshield read, “08 Caddy—Like New!”

When I arrived at what’s left of Leland Shopping Center, I walked into a chaos of people frantically setting up cooking stations. Then a parade of SUV’s arrived. Many were Escalades, BMWs, Mercedes Benzes, and Toyota Highlanders, almost always driven by women. These were north of the river housewives who put on makeup and do their hair, don earrings and then walk the dog before heading off to the upscale Publix Supermarket where we folks north of the river shop. I helped unload SUV after SUV filled with bottled water, clothing items, diapers, sanitary wipes, and blankets. One very attractive woman in her early 40s driving a Lincoln Navigator asked, after I helped her empty its contents of bottled water and paper towels, if we needed anything else. I told her we needed flashlights. She asked where they might be found, and I answered that Home Depot just off 15th Street had not been hit and was open. She confessed that she did not know how to get out of Alberta City and over to 15th and asked if I’d ride with her. I agreed. It took us half an hour to navigate the Navigator through the rubble to Home Depot. She purchased $300 worth of flashlights. Then we drove back into obliteration.

Later Saturday afternoon, several young boys milled around the area where Presbyterians cooked food and handed out supplies donated by people, many of them from north of the river. One asked who was doing the cooking. Another said he thought it was a church group. “Oh really! I’ve been thinking about going to church for some time. In fact, I went on Easter. It’s gone. There’s no more church!” The others laughed. I thought, “Son, look around. The Church is here.”

After a stranger gave me a ride back to my car, I drove north, crossed the Warrior River and headed to Publix Supermarket to pick up fresh fruit. There I ran into the soccer mom I had accompanied to Home Depot. I thanked her again for her help. She pointed out that the real challenge lay ahead. In a few days, many of the SUVs will stop coming from north of the river. Help will be arriving from FEMA and from private contractors but there is still so much to do. The soccer mom gets it.

Mission trips from church groups are one answer, but just one.

As Mayor Walt Maddox of Tuscaloosa pointed out, this is going to be a marathon, and we’re still in the first quarter mile of a long race.

Earl Tilford,
Reporting from North of the River
(Tuscaloosa, Alabama)

— Dr. Earl Tilford is a military historian and fellow for the Middle East & terrorism with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. He currently lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where he is writing a history of the University of Alabama in the 1960s. A retired Air Force intelligence officer, Dr. Tilford earned his PhD in American and European military history at George Washington University. From 1993 to 2001, he served as Director of Research at the U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute. In 2001, he left Government service for a professorship at Grove City College, where he taught courses in military history, national security, and international and domestic terrorism and counter-terrorism.

A Calmer Tornado Alley

Tornado Alley, the swath of prairie from Texas through Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri famous for twisters, may see a largely calm tornado season this year.

The same dominant atmospheric phenomenon that spawned winter blizzards through much of the country generally shifts spring and summer thunderstorm activity northward, says Tony Lupo, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.

That dominant climate factor is a strong La Niña. La Niña occurs when cooler-than-normal water temperatures develop in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

The impact of La Niña is most clearly seen in wintertime, Lupo said. It tends to bring cold weather extremes to parts of the nation. La Niña’s opposite, El Niño, is associated with warmer water temperatures. In the continental U.S. during El Niño years, temperatures in the winter are generally warmer over the North, Midwest and East.

Both climate phenomena, which typically trade places every three to six years, influence weather patterns throughout the world.

Lupo says that La Niña tends to shift the jet stream patterns northward over the U.S. In a La Niña season, the jet streams pick up warm Pacific moisture and direct their cargoes of warm and unstable air to Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. Storm systems tend to follow these streams.

“There has to be heat and moisture to build severe thunderstorms,” Lupo says. “An atmosphere that is too cold or dry will not produce dynamic cloud systems like supercell storms. When the jet stream is farther north, as it is in a La Niña event, you have a better chance of achieving these kinds of temperatures and dew points in these parts of the country.”

In a typical El Niño or neutral year, the jet stream travels farther south through Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas – Tornado Alley.

“There is no statistical data that storm intensity or duration differs between La Niña and El Niño years nationwide,” Lupo says. “However, our data from the 1950s and 1960s relied on human observation, which can be spotty and inaccurate. We only have a few years of reliable national Doppler radar and satellite imagery.”

Tornado Alley may see an unusually calm year for another reason, Lupo said. Atmospheric models predict a dryer-than-normal spring and summer, taking away the fuel for supercell development.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration charts La Niña patterns through monitoring buoys in the Pacific Ocean. NOAA observed a strengthening La Niña in August 2010 and predicts that it will continue through 2011.

Lupo is a member of the Global Climate Change Group, a group that researches planetary-scale atmospheric processes, specifically a phenomenon called atmospheric blocking. Here, stalled large-scale anticyclones impact not only the regions in which they occur, but also regions upstream and downstream of the event.

Missouri’s annual state tornado drill postponed until Thursday, March 10

Due to the weather forecast calling for precipitation tomorrow, March 8, the National Weather Service has postponed Tuesday’s scheduled annual statewide tornado drill. The new date for the drill will be Thursday, March 10 at 1:30 p.m. The weather forecast calls for sunshine on Thursday. The change to Thursday is for the entire state of Missouri.

The 37th annual statewide tornado drill is part of Missouri 2011 Severe Weather Awareness week, which runs from today through Friday, March 11.

Missouri’s 2011 Severe Weather Awareness Week has one goal: to save lives, as the threat for severe weather across the state transitions from snow and ice to severe thunderstorms and flooding.

“The state tornado drill is important because it reminds all of us to plan for weather emergencies that are a common threat across Missouri,” said State Emergency Management Agency Director Paul D. Parmenter. “The drill provides a designated time for schools, businesses and others to practice taking shelter when a tornado warning is issued.”

According to the National Weather Service, Missouri experienced 65 tornadoes in 2010, including multiple tornadoes on Dec. 31, which were responsible for five deaths and 13 injuries. Four of the five people killed were in mobile homes when the tornadoes struck.

The entire drill can be completed in 15 minutes. Once Missourians hear broadcast drill messages or outdoor warning sirens, they should practice seeking shelter. The safest shelter location is an interior room without windows in the lowest level of a building. Other safe locations for businesses and schools include basements, hallways, underneath staircases and designated tornado safe rooms. The drill is complete once everyone is accounted for in the designated shelters.