Topic: South Alabama weather 01/21/2017-01/22/2017

[Intheswamp]

Hmm, we had some strong storms starting before sunrise and continuing through the morning...lightning, heavy rain, strong winds.  Mississippi caught it worse than we did, though, several deaths.  We were at a funeral this afternoon at 1:30pm...the skies were clear blue horizon to horizon.  Now, clouds are gathering again.  Looks like we're in for more storms tonight...  http://www.wsfa.com/story/34312345/josh-early-morning-storm-update

[ocala]

That same system is supposed to roll through here tomorrow afternoon.

[Intheswamp]

Just got back home from picking up two of my granddaughters from Covington county only to have a tornado warning appear for Covington.  Drove through some spectacular lightning and mediocre rain.  Looking like it might be an all-night affair.

Our county (Crenshaw) just got a new system...CodeRed Emergency.  It's a phone notification system.  I'm not so sure how this is going to work out....been getting phone calls of *silence* from it.  Got one this morning at little before 4:30am....silence.  Ten minutes later another call but this one had a recording with it that we were under a tornado watch.  Around here when you see lots of lightning flashing in the windows and feel the house shake from the thunder you kinda figure there might be something going on.  But...waking folks up at that time of the morning for a watch...????

[CW2274]

But...waking folks up at that time of the morning for a watch...????

Absolute recipe for "crying wolf stew".

[Intheswamp]

But...waking folks up at that time of the morning for a watch...????

Absolute recipe for "crying wolf stew".

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking.  Interestingly, last night we had some rough weather but ended up not being as bad as the previous night.  Predictions were for it to be a tad worse.  From what I could tell we got no phone calls from "CodeRed".

[Maumelle Weather]

My county (Saline County in AR) got the CodeRED system a number of years ago. They also bought and distributed NOAA Weather Radios to homes in the county. They did this instead of fixing the sirens, which was fine by me, even though at the time I lived 1/2 mile from a siren at the fire station. The CodeRED system has NOT impressed me at all. We had it when we had a landline phone, and it worked about 50% of the time. I just loved those calls at 3:00 am for a Tornado Watch. When we got rid of our landline, we got 2 NOAA Weather Radios for the house. I have both of them set to alert us of 5 events: Severe Thunderstorm Watches & Warnings, Tornado Watches & Warnings and Flash Flood Warnings. The radios are a Reecom and I have them set where the alarm rings for 8-10 seconds, followed by the Watch/Warning, which plays once, then the radio shuts off. Love it. I no longer have to get out of bed and manually shut the thing off.

Ya'll be careful down there in AL.

John

[Intheswamp]

Well, we had a lot of wind (still getting some) a little bit ago.  I'm seeing spots of blue in the sky now and it's stop the light rain we were getting.  Steady breezes and frequent 20+mph gusts.  Highest gust my station has recorded is 38mph.  Looks like Alabama has mostly been spared...Georgia and Mississippi have both had people killed...four in MS and seven in GA.

[Bunty]

The first high risk in two and a half years was issued Sunday for parts of Georgia and northern Florida.

[Intheswamp]

They got hit hard, too.