Heavy Rain — Tuscaloosa, Alabama

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

Event narrative

Heavy rainfall briefly fell across the city of Tuscaloosa, with approximately 1.28 inches of rain in one hour. Two individuals sought shelter from an possible tornado in the undeveloped basement of their home on the 1400 block of 22nd Avenue. As water from the heavy rainfall leaked into the basement, the force of the water and intruding mud collapsed a retaining wall against them, resulting in one fatality.

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 → (33.2020, -87.5623)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 524765. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.