Mother Nature being a mother

I remember when I was working the desk and our reporter was there, doing play-by-play over the phone. Craziest damned thing I've ever seen.

I was there for the 2000 Tuscaloosa tornado. Not a fun day and I was working at one of the hotels that got its roof ripped off. Glass everywhere, building shaking, fire alarms competing with the whooshing jet-noise sound to rupture my eardrums. And I wasn't even supposed to work that day.

Tuesday morning, my fiancee and I woke up to what sounded like a hurricane about 4:30 a.m. The clunk-clunk-clunk of things hitting our roof and the lightning lit up our room. I looked out and the sky was the angriest I've ever seen. Trees were going sideways.

About 1 a.m., more of the same. Thunder so loud it knocked pictures off our walls.

This has to be the worst severe weather season I've seen here in central South in several years.

 

Weather Channel just rated East Mississippi and North and Central Alabama as having a 90% chance of tornados within 45 miles of any given spot.

Ho-ly shit.

 

Cullman, Ala. getting flattened as we speak.

 

Hospital, EMA and county dispatch in Cullman all took direct hits.

 

Big tornado on the ground in Tuscaloosa. It started near Jackson, Miss., and has killed three people already in East Mississippi.

 

Tornado plowing into south Tuscaloosa on live TV now.

 

TV news in Jackson reporting that the NWS in Huntsville has turned over its warning responsibilities to the Mississippi office because of a tornado bearing down on the Huntsville branch.

 

Link to Birmingham TV coverage of the outbreak. They just said the Tuscaloosa tornado is a mile wide.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ABC-33-40-Main

 

Windows blown out, trees down at DCH hospital in Tuscaloosa. Checking for structural damage. Also University Mall took direct hit.

 

I'm Facebook friends with Patrick Murphy, Alabama's softball head coach, and he just posted that he and many others have taken shelter in the basketball coliseum.

 

Image of the Tuscaloosa tornado:

 

Just saw some real-time footage on The Weather Channel. That sucker was pretty damn close to Bryant-Denny. Couldn't tell if it passed over or not, though.