If you were at home Sunday afternoon watching TV and watching the on-and-off heavy rains, you probably got a lot of alerts over your TV about tornado warnings and severe thunderstorm warnings.
My guess is if you were listening to the radio, you got the same warnings.
While I appreciate such warnings given out by the National Weather Service, my personal feeling is they like to issue a tornado warning too quickly.
I'm 60 years old. I grew up in tornado alley Tuscaloosa. Back in the day, a tornado watch meant there was the possibility of a tornado. A tornado warning meant a tornado had been sighted and it was headed in a certain direction.
It seems today, they issue the warning when we used to get watches. What that does over the long haul is lull people into not believing the TV weatherman or radio weatherman. Get hit with four or five 'warnings' and nothing happens, then you start to ignore the next one which may be an actual tornado heading toward your town or your home. It's kind of like the old tale about the boy crying wolf when a wolf wasn't there and when the wolf finally arrived nobody believed they boy.
I don't think I'm alone in this thinking. James Spann, who many consider the meteorology expert in Birmingham, brought this issue up after the terrible tornado that ripped through Tuscaloosa several years ago. I went to high school with Spann and he said the same thing I'm saying right now. If you call a warning every time conditions are right for a tornado, you lull people into not believing the warning when a tornado is actually headed toward your home.
I was listening to the Paul Finebaum show the day the tornado hit Tuscaloosa. I listened as he described the path and I realized quickly if that path continued toward Bryant-Denny Stadium, it was going to run straight through my mother's house. Luckily it turned. I had some friends and relatives that got hit hard by that tornado. My brother and I both called my mother to tell her to get into the basement. She resisted at first because she had seen too many tornado warnings over the years, but she finally went to the basement.
When I got news that a possible tornado had touched down in the Bethel-Roberts communities Sunday afternoon I headed that way. I went through Jay and got to about the Brewton landfill before I turned around due the rain. I figured if there was significant damage, it would be there Monday morning. Also, I had a Boston Butt on the grill that needed tending too at the time.
I arrived Monday morning and met the main victims: Gene and Marissa Whitt, Tiffany Day and their children. They were trying to pick up the pieces.
As I interviewed them separately, they said they got the first alert of a possible tornado on their cell phones. I really didn't know you had cell phone service in the Bethel-Roberts area. Those alerts and a quick turning on of the TV sent both families to hunkering down as the twister roared across an open field toward their houses.
I didn't ask them which app they had on their cell phone, but as I talked with Escambia County Emergency Management Director David Adams later that day, he pointed me toward one he uses. I got to thinking, if the head of the EMA uses a certain app, he knows what he's talking about.
He directed me to Alabama SAF-T-NET. It's an app that goes to most smart phones and is free to Alabama residents. The best thing he told me about the app is you have options. By signing up you can pick three locations where you want to receive severe weather alerts. Obviously, one would be at your house; a second may be at your business; a third may be in the town where your child or children are attending college. That's up to you. But the fourth location allows you to get severe weather warnings through your phone based on where you are according to GPS. Let's say you take a trip to Montgomery, Tuscaloosa, Auburn or Foley the app will give you severe weather warnings about that location while you are there.
I think we stay in tornado season year around in south Alabama and we are about to enter hurricane season. I encourage you to take a look at the weather warning apps available. Having that immediate alert to tell you a big thunderstorm capable of a tornado or an actual tornado heading toward your home may mean the difference between life and death.
