In his 20 years as a geography professor at Jacksonville State University and his 10 years as a weather forecaster for WJSU-TV 40, Dr. Ted Klimasewski has never seen a day like March 27, 1994.``This is, without question, the most severe weather system we've ever had come through this part of Alabama,'' Klimasewski said Sunday night as he sat in a small room crammed with computer and radar equipment. As if to punctuate his sentence, he was then called into the broadcast studio to air another severe weather update - his third in less than 15 minutes.
Known to local TV viewers as ``Dr. K,'' Klimasewski said the only thing surprising about Sunday's weather system was the intensity of the storms it produced.
``The system was pretty much set up for tornadoes,'' he said. ``You had the warm, moist air versus the cool, dry air. And the storms followed the pattern of our `tornado alley' - from St. Clair through Calhoun and Etowah up to Cherokee.''
According to Jim Henderson, deputy director of the Severe Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City, Sunday's severe weather was ``a typical springtime tornadic outbreak'' for the deep South.
``It's ironic that it occurred about 10 years after the March 28, 1984, outbreak'' in the South, which killed 67, Henderson said. Sunday's storm system was slightly more to the west, but was very similar in origin to that outbreak, he said.
Kevin Brown, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Birmingham, said staff members there were deluged with calls Sunday from witnesses reporting tornadoes. The NWS will conduct a survey to determine whether the damage was caused by tornadoes or straight winds.
Although the damage at Goshen United Methodist Church, where at least 20 were killed, appeared to be caused by straight winds, Brown said several people reported seeing a tornado in the area before the church roof collapsed.
While the violence and damage from tornadoes are well known, the actual mechanics of these storms are complex and not completely understood. They can occur in a variety of situations but are generated most often in severe thunderstorms that occur when warm air and cold air collide.
The collision forces warm air upward, and that creates a low pressure area at the ground. Surrounding air moves in to fill the vacuum.
In severe storms, cloud tops can rise high into the air, reaching the level of strong horizontal winds that blow the tops into the classic anvil shape often reported around tornadoes. When this happens, more air is pulled upward in something like a chimney effect.
The air moving in toward the ``chimney'' begins to turn counterclockwise and then rises in a twisting column of extreme violence.
``Basically two ingredients came together: very strong winds aloft associated with the upper-lever jet and low-level winds,'' Henderson said of Sunday's storms. Winds were stronger than normal at all levels and the air mass was very unstable. Dew points were high, meaning there was a great deal of moisture in the low levels of the atmosphere.
Winds in a tornado are believed to reach more than 200 to 300 mph, although no instruments have ever survived an encounter with one of the storms.
Tornadoes have been more frequent in the past four to five years, setting records for numbers, Henderson said. But they have been ``more of the weak variety, not strong and severe'' as Sunday's tornadoes were.
The jet stream Sunday was a little farther south than usual for spring, ``more typical of a winter pattern,'' he said. Airliners Sunday reported severe turbulence as a result of the strong winds aloft over the Southeast.
Klimasewski said he's been doing research at JSU on the paths taken by local storm systems, and Sunday's storms followed a pattern similar to many in the past. But he said more study is needed to determine why this area sometimes turns into a breeding ground for tornadoes.
Klimasewski had planned to spend a quiet Sunday at the Mountain Top Trade Day north of Gadsden, but the severity of the weather he saw made him decide to get back to the station. He got in to work shortly after 11 and began updating viewers.
``I haven't seen rain like that in a long, long time,'' he said. ``You can just feel the bad weather sometimes.''
For more, visit the Palm Sunday Special Section.The Associated Press contributed to this report.
