Just wondering does everyone get Incompletes for their grades? Thanks for posting the pictures. Just amazing the power of nature. Reminds me of what I saw in Thailand and NOLA in 2005.
I checked out their website yesterday. It stated students had the option of taking the grade they have now without taking the final or could schedule their final exams for a later date. Spring graduates will be able to participate in the Summer graduation ceremony as well. That message is currently still up: http://www.ua.edu/
It was an EF5 Tornado and they said that the wind speeds topped out at 205mph. As for the grades we can take our current grades and not take our finals or we can take our finals at a later date. This works well for me in some ways, but in other classes, ones that I struggled in, the Final would also replace our lowest test grades so I'm going to have to go schedule an appointment to take them sometime later in the summer.
Wow...that is simply amazing...RIP to all those people... A friend of mines parents lived off the lake near gadsden, AL (ohatchee) and their lake house is gone..most of the houses are gone...luckily they're ok...
Glad you are ok Bear. I heard from some other Bama students that it is a mess down there but heard a lot of helping hand stories so Japan aren't the only ones that can act civil during a crisis. TVA lost all the main transmission lines in the state of AL so getting gas to get home has been a problem. It hit our area too but not quite as bad. Lots of F1/F2s, 1 F3 and 1 F4. 8 died in this little video shot. Imagine if you weren't watching tv...you're working in that gas station...you hear a noise...you have 5 seconds to find the safest place....times up... http://www.wrcbtv.com/global/video/...&at1=undefined&d1=462733&LaunchPageAdTag=News - Breaking News&undefined&activePane=info&rnd=2677350 There were 3 waves on this storm. The 1st hit at 9am and an F1 came through within a 1/2 mile of my work. Mostly just minor damage except for a few unfortunate folks. The 2nd wave hit around 3pm more of the same - a couple of F1/F2s. Much more damage than the 1st round. 1 woman died from a tree falling on her house while her husband and 9 year old son ran into the next room. Then the big one hit at 9:30 pm. Lots of F1 and F2s - an F3 and F4. I was texting my friend in Ringgold when the F4 came by his house. He was lucky. This one killed 8, went to the next town (Apison) killed 9, and went up to Cleveland TN and killed 9 more. It's going to take some time to recover from this.
If you already haven't, you should watch something like Storm Chasers on Discovery Channel. They try to intercept tornados by sitting in their vehicles and having them pass over them (for the most part). Those dudes have some guts (or are crazy).
It's not just the wind. A tornado ends up being a big grinder since the debris it picks up becomes projectiles that bash everything it makes contact with. So you end up with brick buildings being hit by 2x4's, washing machines, rocks, tree limbs, cars, and who knows what else. Their weak points would be the mortar holding them together and even brick buildings won't stand a chance against tornados as strong this one was - an F4 or F5 pretty much destroys anything in its path.
They truly are amazing things. F5s will twist a live 24" solid oak off 8 foot from the base...rip the asphault up right off the road...bend metal beams in a 90 degree angle. We came through a town in KS one time minutes after one hit. The most amazing thing I remember was it ripped the roof and a brick wall off an old apt. You could see inside the bedroom where everything looked undisturbed - a made bed and a night stand which still had a kleenex box on the night stand just a foot or 2 from the missing wall. One time (1981?) while driving from the Ozarks to IA with some buddies, we stopped in a liquior store in Sedelia MO when the tornado sirens went off. People were running around and we were just laughing at these "fools". We just continued on our journey home. We saw 7 tornados within 45 minutes of stopping. We didn't have anywhere to go and the ditches were full of water so we just kept going N. The storm was heading E and 6 of them were on our right so we felt ok. 1 was on the left but it was a long way off. We got so close to one that we could see it ripping the barb wire fence up into the air off some farmer's pasture. Looking back I think we were the fools.
I think this was an earlier one, but interesting to look at how close it came to this guy... <iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UgwJfoZ-12c" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
^ LOL. I was just a stupid 21 year old in a beat up 73 Marquis and just kept driving. This man was sounded much older (old enough to know better), in a nice truck and watched this thing come right for him. I normally don't say this word because 1/2 the time it's me but what an idiot.
Seriously...I had maybe 30 seconds to react after learning of the Tornado. The tornado sirens were going off all day, but they went off all last week and the week before so I just kept ignoring them, thinking that it was just another "potential" tornado. Sure enough I'm doing finance homework in my apartment(Which is half a block away from 15th and McFarland) and my friend gets a phone call from his dad to turn on the T.V. because there's a tornado. We didn't take it seriously and just walked over to the T.V., tried to find fox and finally took a look and saw a massive tornado. We were trying to figure out where it was when we saw it and realized that it was coming straight for us. Literally, a second after we figured out where it was going, the power went off and my place started shaking. Of course, being 21 year olds filled with adrenaline, we run to the windows to look up and then we ran outside to try to video tape it. It was just so surreal. Going down 15th, knowing that I went to smoothie king earlier that day and that it was reduced to nothing. Imagine about a mile of Westheimer road completely destroyed and nothing left.
Wow, I didn't know there was such little warning on the tornado's. It is worse than a hurricane in many ways, because at least with those you have alot of advance warning. The fates must have been kind on you that day.
I know he's been taking a lot of heat recently but Charlie Sheen visited today and he's donated over 1 million to help out victims affected by the storm in Tuscaloosa. Say what you want but not only was it a great deed but it gave the town some hope. A lot of people were worried that the most recent news(Killing of Osama) would make everyone forget what happened down here. Here's a link http://blog.al.com/montgomery/2011/05/charlie_sheen_lands_in_tuscalo.html
Here's an adjustable graphic that compares this year's tornado deaths with past years. Really drives the death toll home...this year has been horrific already, and it's only May. http://www.newscientist.com/embedded/tornadoes-death-toll-graphic
With everything else that has happened the last two weeks most national attention has shifted from the devastation of the tornadoes. This type of thing happens in all disasters but for the tornadoes attention seemed very short lived. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42935279/ns/weather South fears loss of national interest in twister recovery 'They're going to forget us just like they forgot about Japan,' pastor says HARVEST, Ala. — The Rev. Michael Katschke is worried, but not about running out of the food, diapers and other supplies he hands out to tornado victims at the Crosswinds United Methodist Church in northern Alabama. Katschke is worried about the rest of the country just moving on. "They're going to forget us just like they forgot about Japan," he said. The search for bodies is still going on in parts of the tornado-ravaged South, but the country's worst natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina is already fading from the public consciousness, pushed aside first by the royal wedding and now by Osama bin Laden's death. That means donations and out-of-state volunteers will likely drop off as the region tries to recover after tornadoes killed at least 329 people and destroyed communities across seven states. "It depends on the news cycle, but the reality is, you generally only have three or four days" to keep the attention of the broader public, said Mickey Caison, who oversees disaster relief efforts for the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board. "Typically, when the national media moves on, that window of opportunity closes." Officials in Alabama, which suffered the most widespread destruction and the heaviest loss of life, are keenly aware of that. They've been trying to keep their state's needs at the top of the national agenda. That was part of the reason Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox decided to meet with actor Charlie Sheen this week, when the former "Two and a Half Men" star toured the devastation in the college town where at least 41 people died in the storms. "Anytime we can get national attention about the plight of Tuscaloosa, I think it's a positive thing," he said. "It's important that we're not forgotten." While national and local relief groups are still tallying donations, many say they expect to see a sharp drop-off in contributions for tornado relief after about the first week. That loss of momentum is rarely regained. And it makes it harder to convince donors in six months or a year that the needs are still urgent. "When people see the images on television, they're literally seeing 32 inches of a disaster," Red Cross national spokeswoman Laura Howe said. "I don't think a lot of people realize how long-lasting the effects of a disaster are." Take, for example, New Orleans and its ongoing recovery from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. "We are still living with Katrina every day," said Vanessa Gueringer of New Orleans. "All these years later. Every day." Gueringer is the chairwoman of A Community Voice, a group that works on behalf of residents in the Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly black neighborhood that suffered some of the worst destruction. Although the effects of Katrina are still being felt in everything from blighted properties to flood control efforts, Gueringer said, Katrina has become essentially a local issue. National attention tends to return only on major anniversaries, and then news stories gloss over the ongoing problems, she said. "They'll go out of their way to find one or two good things so they can say the city has recovered," she said. "Meanwhile, we still have water coming up over our streets, we still have blighted houses and we still have kids being bused out of this neighborhood to go to school." National attention, however, doesn't have to waver from what can turn out to be a bigger story than the disasters themselves, namely the long-term consequences, said Kelly McBride, a media ethics expert at the Poynter Institute. But she said that once the spotlight leaves a place, it rarely returns. "I wish the media would sustain stories on a long-term basis, and some can," she said, pointing to ongoing coverage of Haiti following the catastrophic January 2010 earthquake. "But the challenge for a local disaster, especially if it doesn't involve a Los Angeles or a Boston, is that there's not going to be a lot of demand on the national news for coverage." Regardless of what replaces the tornadoes on front pages and nightly newscasts, outside aid will still come in, from groups like the Red Cross. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will have a long-term presence in the disaster areas. Groups who see a permanent drop in donations mostly have themselves to blame, said Ruthellen Rubin, a consultant in the nonprofit industry. She said they need to create and nurture relationships with new donors drawn in by a disaster. "It is the nonprofit's responsibility to take ownership of the donor. Ditto for volunteers," she said. "The competition for dollars is fierce in the social sector." At the Alabama church, Katschke watched as a steady stream of victims left his "mini-Walmart" with arms full of grocery bags. "People donate or come out for a day and lift a tree branch and feel good about themselves. OK, that's fine," Katschke said. "But if you want to keep feeling good about yourself, I hope you'll come back later and ask what the needs are. Because we'll still be here."
