Mega Tornado rips Enterprise Alabama

[slickdawg]

CNN Headline just showed images, very disturbing. I say F4, maybe F5.

The destruction is unbelievable. A school was destroyed with students in it, at least 4 dead.


Prayers out to those people and their families.


http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/WEATHER/03/01/severe.weather/newt1.1820.car.ap.jpg

[Newbomb Turk]

yeah - that is terrible.

They said the students in the school had plenty of advance notice, and were in their shelter (hallway), but the roof fell in on the hallway. :(

[soonersweetie]

That's just horrible. My prayers are with the victims' families and with the rescue people as well. I imagine they are seeing some pretty awful things that will haunt them for awhile as well.

[Sooner Mommy]

This news is very sad. I graduated from Enterprise HS in 1992, and it's surreal to see such devastation where I spent my "formative" years. My dad was in the Army, and I had never lived 4 whole years in any single place until we moved to Enterprise.

Many, many prayers to the people of Enterprise and those who are working in the rescue efforts.

[Tailwind]

How awful. My heart goes out to those people .

[Jerk]

All these tornados hitting the deep south in winter is bad news for Oklahoma come spring.

[OUTromBoNado]

Looks more like EF3, maybe low-end EF4 damage to me. The walls are still standing on those frame houses.

On another note, a major company that produces Doppler radars used by many TV stations around the country is located in Enterprise. I'm sure they probably have a couple of test radars installed that they use. I bet they got some awesome data from this thing. "Awesome" purely from the scientific standpoint, because this is pretty horrible. I have a friend who is from Enterprise.

[Okla-homey]

Is the Boll Weevil Statue okay?

That query is not intended to be dismissive of human suffering, but, that boll weevil monument is the only public statue erected to an agricultural pest in the whole wide world.

[slickdawg]

Um, is the Boll Weevil statue in Enterprise?

[Okla-homey]

Um, is the Boll Weevil statue in Enterprise?

yes.

[SoonerJack]

I can't believe Slickdawg didn't know about the boll weevil statue.

For me the horror is imagining what those kids in the school must have gone through. You just never know.

[Osce0la]

Yes, the Boll Weevill statue is in Enterprise (actually I just saw it last year on my way down to Tallahassee)...From what they were saying on the news here some kids were in the gym when it hit and the roof on the gym collapsed as well, trapping a few students in the gym. It was pretty rough last night. We were under a tornado warning for about 3 1/2 hours straight in Jefferson County and they reported that a small tornado touched down in Adamsville (about 20 miles from my home now - about 10 miles from where I used to live) but there were no deaths in that storm. Enterprise took a very heavy hit yesterday. They described it as looking like a bomb went off in that town...
Strange thing is, even with the 3+ hour tornado warning, we barely even got any bad storms at my house. The wind picked up for about 10 minutes and we got a little bit of thunder and lightning during that 10 minutes, but other than that we didn't get much of anything...

Here is a link to the video/photo galleries on the Alabama storms...
linkage (http://www.myfoxal.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=2543313&version=3&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=1.1.1)

[crawfish]

Man...that's horribile. :(

[Osce0la]

Not sure if this link (javascript:void(window.open('http://video.ap.org/v/en-ap/v.htm?g=54F56543-68FF-42F0-8E2B-D0206DF957E0&f=adval&fg=copy','_blank','width=788,height=598,status=1,s crollbars=1,resizable=1'));) will work or not, it is to another video. If not, I found it on the front page of al.com...There is also footage of the tornado on that video...

[Osce0la]

More photos from Enterprise
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/6087/tornado1hm1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/9545/tornado10ey8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/9403/tornado11xg6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/5641/tornado12la8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/5688/tornado13ql0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/5831/tornado14py9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/6326/tornado15xq1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/314/tornado16my5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/7613/tornado2ve9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/1918/tornado3sx9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/2410/tornado4fd8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/1109/tornado5vo8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/6020/tornado7ai0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/9819/tornado8xg9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/4213/tornado9zo6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[slickdawg]

man, that's definately F4 material, maybe F5. There's one shot I just saw on CNN, no homes at all, just the slabs.

[OUTromBoNado]

I haven't seen this footage on CNN you're talking about, but based on the pictures above, I don't think that will qualify as EF-5 damage. Probably EF-4, high end EF-3 at the least.

It's very hard to get an EF-5 rating with the new scales. Even with the old scale, the last F5 was Moore. They are very reluctant to assign those ratings. The closest once since was in La Plata, Maryland. It was initally given an F5 rating, but was downgraded upon closer surveys. They found that construction really wasn't good, and the houses just "slid" off the foundation rather than being blown apart.

It will probably be a couple of days before this gets a rating. If it looks to be EF-4 or higher, a special response team has to be called in for the survey.

[Osce0la]

We actually had an F5 not far from Birmingham a few years ago in Oak Grove. That one completely destroyed the town of Oak Grove, including Oak Grove High School. Had that one not lifted, it would've destroyed the city I lived in at the time...

This is what was left of Oak Grove High School after that one
http://www.lindleyonline.com/oakgrove.jpg

[slickdawg]

CNN just reported that the NWS labeled this as a 3 - I find that hard to believe. The damage really looks more like a 4.

[Osce0la]

In the pic above (Oak Grove) there used to be a football field in the bottom center of the pic (right where the word tornado starts). And to the left of the football field all of that white debris was part of the high school. I remember playing on that field a few times between seventh and 9th grade...our locker room (visitor's locker room) was in the demolished area right above the football field. They actually had their homecoming game at our stadium the year after this happened in Oak Grove...There was cheerleaders in the gym of that school when that one hit...

[StormySooner-IN]

CNN just reported that the NWS labeled this as a 3 - I find that hard to believe. The damage really looks more like a 4.I don't see anything about it on the NWS Tallahasee website yet. I'll keep checking.

[OUTromBoNado]

If they suspect that the damage is EF-4 or higher, a special response team must come in and do a secondary survey. Individual NWS offices are not allowed to assign the highest ratings on their own. It's just one of those double-check kind of things.

I know a few of those people that are assigned to those teams. Those folks have some serious weather skillz.

[OUTromBoNado]

Preliminary storm report issued this morning from Tallahasse is the Enterprise tornado was rated EF-3, pretty much what I thought.


0210 PM TORNADO ENTERPRISE 31.31N 85.85W
03/01/2007 F3 COFFEE AL NWS STORM SURVEY

*** 9 FATAL, 50 INJ *** 8 KILLED IN SCHOOL WHEN CONCRETE
WALL COLLAPSED IN HALLWAY. FOOTBALL STADIUM COMPLETELY
DESTROYED. CARS OVERTURNED. DOWTOWN HIT HARD WITH DAMAGE
AT DIXIE DRIVE AND COLLEGE STREET. SR27, SR88, SR134
IMPASSIBLE DUE TO DOWNED UTILITY LINES. TORNADO PATH
APPROX. 200 YARDS WIDE AND 10 MILES LONG. INFO BASED ON
STORM SURVEY BY WCM ON 3/2/07. RATED EF3 ON NEW ENHANCED
FUJITA SCALE.

Here's the website: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/tae/Mar0102_2007/LSRTAE_03010207.txt