Weather highlights 2011

This photo was taken at the College Road area off Franklin 237 in Phil Campbell following the deadly April tornado that was part of an extreme weather season in Franklin County.

The year 2011 was a year of extreme weather events across the world, from the deadly earthquake and tsunami in Japan to the extreme drought and wildfires in the Southwest to the flooding of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers to the historic tornado outbreak that affected more than 20 states.
Northwest Alabama doesn’t usually fall into the category of extreme weather events, but 2011 saw rare accumulations of snow in January and Franklin County became one of the areas to be affected by the five-day tornado outbreak from April 24 to April 29 that set a world record for the greatest tornado outbreak in recorded world history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Franklin County residents are used to seeing a couple of snow flurries during the winter months, but the extremely rare white Christmas the area experienced in 2010 should have been a tip-off of snow to come.
Three weeks after the white Christmas event, the area received an average of nine inches of snow – something meteorologists with the National Weather Service (NWS) said is very uncommon for this area.
“That kind of a snowfall is maybe a one in 20 or 30 year event,” meteorologist Kris White said. “We had to go back to 1988 to find a comparable snowfall in the Northwest Alabama area.”
City and county schools had to rearrange their schedules to accommodate for the unusual amount of snow days they had to take for the 2010-2011 school year and local businesses and offices were forced to close because icy road conditions lasted for several days.
“What also made that particular snowfall unusual was the number of days the snow stayed on the ground,” White said. “It’s not common for snow to stick around so many days, but we had Arctic air that moved in after the snow that kept it lingering for a while.”
After the unpredictable winter, residents then experienced a stormy spring that climaxed on April 27 as the area was pounded by the 210 mph winds of the EF-5 tornado that tore a path of destruction from Phil Campbell to East Franklin killing 26 residents and destroying hundreds of homes and businesses.
According to the official NWS report released on May 1, the tornado that ripped through Franklin County was one of the worst, especially in the Oak Grove community where the winds “reached a relative maximum in intensity well into the EF5 category as the damage was slightly more intense and the path width was at a maximum of greater than one mile.”
In the aftermath of the tornado, Franklin County residents couldn’t believe the amount of destruction that was caused in a matter of minutes. Damages in Phil Campbell alone were estimated at $119 million with a near 1,200 structures destroyed.
“To have such significant severe weather outbreaks like the area experienced in April, certain conditions all have to come together to make that happen,” White said. “There has to be an extreme combination of instability and wind sheer to create an outbreak like that, and April 27 was just one of those days where there was the perfect combination of these factors.
“This outbreak was historic and it really was a once in a lifetime type of event. I issued 35 to 40 warnings that day just myself and my colleagues told me that would probably never happen again. I told them that I hope they’re right.”
Even though the devastation seemed impossible to overcome, help poured in from literally all over the world in the form of volunteers, monetary donations and donations of clothing, food and other necessities.
At one point, so many donations of clothing and other items had been made that Russellville Police Chief Chris Hargett, whose department coordinated collections at Clark Pulley, said they had to turn people away.
“The amount of donations we received was tremendous,” Hargett said. “People were coming from all over wanting to donate what they could to help the tornado victims.”
In addition to individual donations, groups that ranged from school children in Shelby County to famous musicians to state officials to retired school teachers in Missouri to Mennonite house builders and every group in between began to raise money or gather donations for the tornado-ravaged areas of Franklin County.
One of the groups that gained the most media attention, even on a national level, was a group of people with variations of the name “Phil Campbell” that banded together under the moniker “I’m With Phil” to raise money for their namesake town and actually visited the area during Phil Campbell’s Hoedown celebration and the “I’m With Phil” event in June.
Rita Barton, who serves as chairwoman of the Phil Campbell Park and Recreation Department, said after the “I’m With Phil” event came to a close that she didn’t have enough words to thank all the people who had helped her town.
“I have to admit, I was stunned by the generosity of all the people who contributed [to this event],” Barton said. “I am never speechless, but I have to admit, I was then. That shows that people do care and love our town as much as we do.”
Phil Campbell and East Franklin continue to receive assistance and support from many groups and individuals and the town is well on its way to recovering and rebuilding.