Early Monday morning Alabama had a couple of strong tornadoes rip through the state.  One tornado now rated an EF3 went thorough northern Tuscaloosa County and then went into Jefferson County and damaged places such as Oak Grove, Center Point, Clay, and Trussville before moving into St. Clair County.  Another strong tornado started in Perry County and moved into Chilton County and damaged the city of Maplesvile and the area of Clanton.  The surveys by the National Weather Service are still being conducted and we won’t know the full damage for a few more days.  This state was still recovering from the April 27th tornado outbreak when we were struck again in the early morning hours of January 23rd.  The warning times were excellent from the local meteorologists and most people heeded the warnings.   But the damage pictures are just stunning.  I stayed up all night long to cover the warnings and when the storms went through Jefferson County I knew there would be trouble.

Look at the image above closely.  You can make out the tornado being shown by the lighting in the air.

Just look at the rotation on the radar screen above.  I knew by looking at that there was a tornado on the ground.   And just after the sun rose above the horizon the damage pictures started to come in.

The images were just hard to see.  One tornado was so strong that is bent over a 300 ft. radio tower.  During the day the overhead shots came in from helicopter.

If you want to see many more images of the tornado damage.  I have provided some links below to see.

http://photos.al.com/4461/gallery/alabama_storm_and_tornado_damage_01232012/index.html

http://photos.al.com/4558/gallery/alabama_storm_damage_january_23_2012_/index.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/abc3340weather/

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