Storms on the radar · April 27, 2011
Tuscaloosa–Birmingham, 2011
Opens HookEcho on KBMX at 2011-04-27 22:10:00 UTC and loads the archived volumes for that day. The archive goes back to 1991.
The 2011 Super Outbreak produced 360 tornadoes in three days. On 27 April alone, 216 touched down. The Tuscaloosa–Birmingham EF4 stayed on the ground for 80 miles and killed 64 people.
What the radar shows. The link opens on base reflectivity from Birmingham, because on this day the classic hook is not the interesting part — the sheer count is. Step the loop and you are watching a line of discrete supercells, each with its own hook, marching northeast in parallel across the whole state. Central Alabama’s radar was tracking several simultaneous violent tornadoes.
Turn the warning overlay on and the map fills with polygons faster than the loop advances.
Archive volumes come from NOAA's public NEXRAD archive on AWS, the same source the National Weather Service publishes. Nothing here is a re-render of someone else's picture.
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