Squidcast sent from the lens The Best Tornado Photos

This year following storm chasers and meteorologists on Twitter seems to be the best way to get the news as it's happening.  Last year I relied on the Facebook feeds and the storm chaser map and life streams.  This year I watch the Twitter feeds to tell me where to look and to find out what's happening as close to real time as possible.  

The meteorologists at ABC 33/40 out of Birmingham, Alabama did an amazing job of reporting what was happening.  I guess there were other TV stations in the area doing the same thing but this was the one mentioned on my Twitter feeds.  I watched for hours - partly because they managed to catch three tornadoes on their SkyCams while I was watching - and partly because of the skill of the lead meteorologist's reporting.  (It wasn't just me who noticed what a great job James Spann and his crew did:  ABC 33/40 Shines )

Those images from the SkyCams where at first there was just a big cloud with what looked like a curtain of rain and then out of that materialized a churning monster are etched into my mind.  The first one I saw was the one that demolished Cullman, Alabama.  I have never seen anything with multiple vortices quite like that.  They were more like tentacles than anything else.  And it looked big.

But I hadn't seen big until I saw the Tuscaloosa behemoth emerge from the mist.  And I NEVER thought it would hold together through Birmingham, let alone for hours more.  I gave up following it at 10 p.m and the "debris ball" was still in place.  At one point yesterday Dr. Forbes of The Weather Channel said something about how he'd never seen so many debris balls on radar in his entire career as he saw in one day yesterday.

Here is just some of the amazing footage that was captured yesterday:

Multivortex Tornado in Cullman, Alabama.  This thing is just crazy.

Tornado on Mountain in Empire, Alabama.  This may have been the same one that went through Tuscaloosa and Birmingham as Empire is just to the north of Birmingham.  Not sure, though, because it seems many of the tornadoes yesterday were big like this.

Tornado at University Mall in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  This is riveting video, both for the closeness to the actual tornado, the size of it, and the emotional response of the videographer after the storm passes.  

My heart goes out to everybody having to recover from the destruction and sheer terror of being in the path of something like this.  If you want to help the best way is to contact the Red Cross.