Hi CJ and all,
Thanks for thinking of me. It was a harrowing day down here. The squall line really started to pop about 2:00 pm and the tornado touchdowns started up in Dallas County. I was tracking them on radar and all of the would curve just to north of Prattville until about 2:45, when one storm, N6, developed and never lost its direct line of travel to Prattville. It developed a vortex signature in Lowndes County and briefly touched down on the outskirts of Whitehall.
I expected it to start curving north after it crossed the Lowndes/Autauga county line but it never wavered. I got the family and all out emergency lighting down in the basement just in case. I continued to watch the storm as it continued on a line that was basically right over my house. It looked like it would be just a severe thunderstorm but, about five miles south of the house, it developed the hook shaped echo again.
Surprisingly, there was very little rain falling and just some occasional lightning with no sign of any rotational cloud movement. The radar doesn't lie, though, so I went outside to watch the wall cloud and listen. You've probably heard the old saying about tornado's sounding like freight trains, and they do, if they are right on top of you. If they are close but not closer than a mile, they sound like continuous low rumbles of thunder. Since we had been having thunder, I stood outside to listen, There were a few normal rumbles of thunder and then one that didn't stop and was getting louder. That was enough for me. I headed for the basement with all due haste.
We have a very heavily constructed pool table in the basement and that's what we took shelter under. The guys that made the pool table did a much stronger job than I did on my layout.
I had timed the storm to be over us in three minutes when I hit the basement. In those three minutes, we had 71 mph straight-line wind gusts and .94 inches of rain. It was the most torrential rain I have ever seen in my life. I listened for the dreaded freight train sound but luckily the trains were all sitting quietly on the layout and no other freight train came by.
After five minutes, the rain slacked off some so I cautiously opened the cellar door to see what was happening since the storm should have been to east of us by that time. It was, probably a mile off in the distance. There was a huge rotating wall cloud with a a funnel cloud beginning to move toward touch down again and a secondary funnel cloud just to the north. I could see that touchdown was going to happen right in one of the main parts of Prattville and there was nothing I could do but watch. It was about as helpless as I've ever felt.
The tornado has apparently lifted back into the wall cloud while it was over our neighborhood and then descended again into one of the most heavily populated parts of Prattville. I suffered no damage except a few tree limbs down and a few shingles blown off. Many other people here were not so fortunate. One never knows real numbers this early into the incident but the current estimate is 30 homes and apartment buildings destroyed and 170 homes and apartment buildings damaged. The two shopping center across the street from each other, one with a Walmart and the other with a K-Mart were heavily damaged and appear to be constructive total losses to me. The Whitney Bank Building, which was a four story building, is now a two story building. There were numerous other businesses that suffered everything from blown-in windows to total collapse. The funnel cloud dissipated about a half-mile north of the main business area, sparing the next section of town to the north the same kind of damage so it could have been much worse. The squall line was also very narrow and moving at 60 mph so the whole thing was over in less than five minutes. If this had been a 100 mile wide, slow moving squall line, the results would have been truly disastrous.
For some reason which makes no sense to me, they have suspended searching the collapsed structures until first light. If there are people alive in any of these collapses, they may not make it until morning. In California, after the Loma Prieta earthquake, we searched for 80 hours straight using dogs, infrared, and thermal imaging cameras. But, I'm not in California, so all I can do is hope there are no living persons in any of those structures.
They mayor says there were no fatalities. Until all the collapsed structures are searched, I don't know how he can make that statement, and I hope he doesn't end up eating his words. The last estimate was 40 hospitalized injured with four in critical condition. There were uncounted numbers of walking wounded treated at triage stations.
So, as usual with life, fate, God, physics, luck, whatever you want to attribute it to, meant the difference of a few miles and lot of injury and destruction. I'm very thankful that my family and I are safe.
I saw some of the footage at Summerville and they showed that body shop. Whatever cars weren't totaled when they were bought in are now.
I haven't heard of any fatalities anywhere in Alabama, which is amazing since the current estimate is that there 30 tornado touchdowns in the state.
Sorry for the long ramble but it was quite a day and it feels good to write it all down.