EF1 Tornado — Tuscaloosa, Alabama

2014-04-28 · near Hull, Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Event narrative

A tornado touched down near the intersection of Fosters Loop Road and Cypress Creek Road, where it snapped and uprooted hundreds of trees. It moved northeastward, crossing the Black Warrior River near Maxwell Bend. Several homes sustained significant roof and porch damage on the east bank of the river in the River Point Subdivision. It continued moving northeast, snapping and uprooting hundreds of trees and causing mainly minor shingle and roof damage to numerous homes as it moved through several subdivisions. As the tornado continued north and eastward, the tornado crossed Old Greensboro Road where it uprooted and snapped the trunks of numerous large, old hardwoods at the Little Sandy Baptist Church. The tornado continued northeast across Highway 69 with winds of 95 mph, where it downed multiple trees on the east side of the highway. The tornado took a more easterly track and produced sporadic tree damage until it reached the Taylorwood Estates subdivision and the Bear Creek trailer park. In this area, the tornado snapped or uprooted hundreds of trees. The tornado then moved east-northeast and caused sporadic tree damage as it crossed U.S. Highway 82 and Hargrove Road. Just west of Hargrove Road, the tornado uprooted and snapped numerous hardwood and softwood trees and caused major damage to 25 mobile homes as trees fell on the homes. One small porch was ripped from a double wide mobile home. The tornado then moved through the Woodland Forest subdivision where it uprooted and snapped hundreds of trees. As the tornado approached Buttermilk Road, southerly winds got under the soffit of a single family home and ripped out a small portion of the roof. The tornado caused minor roof damage and uprooted several trees on the east side Buttermilk Road before it finally lifted. This tornado was very close to the path of the F4 tornado in 2000.

Wider weather episode

A large scale severe weather event began Saturday, April 26 and ended Wednesday, April 30th, producing several waves of severe weather from the Central Plains eastward through the Deep South, and across a significant portion of the eastern United States. Strong and violent tornadoes, very large hail, flash flooding, and damaging straight line winds accompanied this dynamic storm system. The most tornadoes occurred across the Deep South as the system moved into Mississippi and Alabama on Monday, April 28th. Supercell thunderstorms developed during the afternoon over eastern Mississippi and northwest Alabama in the warm sector well ahead of a cold front. The activity slowly spread east and southeast overnight, with this wave of severe storms ending early Tuesday morning. Storms redeveloped late Tuesday afternoon and moved into Central Alabama. A large area of rainfall across the northern Gulf Coast limited the amount of instability across the area, and storms remained below severe limits. The last wave of severe weather occurred early Wednesday morning across the south as an isolated storm produced large hail, as the system finally pulled east of the area.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (33.0625, -87.6345)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 522933. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.