A Look Back on the April 27th Tornado Outbreak

In honor of the one year anniversary of the April 27th Outbreak, the staff of the NWS in Huntsville put together a series of videos to share our experiences from the event. The links below will take you to the NWS YouTube channel where you can view the videos of interviews with our meteorologists and staff (Part 1-3). In addition, we have put together a fourth video that may help you understand the level of destruction left behind in the aftermath of the April storms, through a side-by-side comparison of areas before and after the storms hit.

Part 1 provides an introduction and then takes you through event preparation and the day of the outbreak.

Part 2 takes you through the days and weeks following the outbreak, including storm surveys and dealing with the widespread power outage.

In Part 3, they discuss things you may not know about NWS severe weather operations, how this outbreak changed their perspectives of severe weather, and gives their final thoughts on the event from one year later. Names of those lost to the storms in North Alabama are included at the end, to honor them, their families, and their communities.

This slideshow gives the perspective of the level of damage sustained across the Tennessee Valley on April 27^th, 2011. Using Google Street View images and storm survey photos, you can see the before and after shots of the destruction.