In an April 11, 2009 publication of The Montgomery Advertiser, the Fernandez family described their harrowing experience that day as their mobile home met its demise. “The wind blew too hard. We were about to leave when we heard it coming so we jumped on the couch and then everything was blown away,” Thomas Fernandez Jr. recalled as he and his younger sister Anna suffered minor injuries. But the physical pain brought by the twister did not compare to what lay ahead on Fernandez’s road to recovery. Their father, Thomas Sr., explained, “it blew everything away. We’ve lost everything. What you see is what we’ve got.”
Now turning more to the east-northeast, the vortex began to enter Powell. It crossed County Road 158 and traveled down Thomas Avenue, where multiple chicken houses were turned into ruins. The tornado then crossed Alabama Highway 35, where a large, well-anchored, metal industrial building was left in a heap. It was at this location where the strongest estimated winds of the two tornadoes occurred. Northeast of Powell along County Road 47/Broad Street, a neighborhood suffered minor damage to homes, and substantial treefall.
2 Comments
cc3649 · February 20, 2023 at 4:16 pm
Interesting research! Based on the damage analysis, I would say that both segments should be rated EF-3.
Zachary Reichle · February 21, 2023 at 12:35 pm
Thank you so much!
As someone whose fascination for tornadoes was sparked by the event, this summary was fun. I was 12 then, living in Scottsboro just up the river. When the storm approached, my parents urgently directed the rest of the family to the basement, saying that nearby communities had been hit and people were hurt. At the same time, we had a metal roof. The hail from this storm sounded like a dump truck had parked over our house and unloaded a hefty amount of gravel on top of us. After the storm passed, we went outside and admired hail at least the size of quarters.