April 27, 2011 Historic Tornado Outbreak - ABC 33/40 Live Coverage 3:30am-9:00am 

Everyone gives James Spann his flowers, and rightfully so, but Jason Simpson was outstanding on this day - both alone in the early morning, and then afterwards assisting and providing additional info when Spann was on

These 2 men saved thousands of lives that day and that’s NOT an understatement. Jason especially did an amazing job during the morning storms. This day was April 3, 1974 all over again and these guys were true pros with their coverage.

3:01:15 "If the principal gets mad, tell them to call me." I chuckled at that a bit. I've never been to Alabama but hopefully things have obviously improved in the 5 years since this day. Y'all should be proud to have weathermen like this to help protect your lives.

When they're already putting out tornado warnings at 0330 in the AM, you're looking at a day straight out of hell itself

Who's here 13 years later?

I have not watched the whole video, but was Jason Simpson on the air for about 2 straight hours by himself, without a break? That's nothing short of heroic.

At around 3:10:50 Jason Simpson is discussing the possible tornado in Cullman County where his family who lives in the Holly Pond area are trying to reach out to him informing him what's going on. You can tell he was nervous reporting the possible tornado as it was happening. It's hard to imagine what was going through his mind at that moment. Fortunately, his family escaped the tornado and he did a superb job covering this severe weather coverage throughout the day, especially in the beginning where he was by himself .

Everybody on this broadcast did such a great job of staying composed... especially Jason Simpson, who had to deal with a storm hitting right where his family was.

Damn, watching these guys is literally like taking a graduate level course in meteorology

when the meteorologist says "we are in full outbreak mode" you know you're in some deep shit

"Principal get mad. Tell him to call me," Me: *W H E E Z E*

Jason Simpson and James Spann are pure legends.. they saved many lives that day, even though so many were lost

This is the highest level of service to the public. We will never know how many lives their work preserved. We can only mourn what we lost.

My oldest daughter was at her dad's house that day and they lost their home and his aunt was killed. There was a Ford pickup truck laying right on top of where my daughter's bed was. I didn't know if my daughter was dead or alive for about 4 hours. It was TERRIFYING!!!

I know James got a lot of the accolades that day covering the gut of the outbreak, but Jason did an equally fine job during those scary AM hours. These morning storms knocked out power to a lot of communities and undoubtedly played a role in the tragic loss of life that day by cutting off vital communications. Please never get angry at your local TV weather crews for preempting your game or show for severe weather bulletins. You might have a phone app to warn you, but someone else with a tornado or flash flood bearing down on them may not.

This man deserves a medal.

At 1:36:37 there is a reverse, to correct that go to this time 2:23:23

2:47:04 James Spann enters the building.

This outbreak definitely changed the outlook of schools delaying vs. closing schools. In Madison County, school was always either delayed or nothing. I was in Buckhorn Middle School on this day. My mom came and checked me and friend out, as we left, a tornado dropped down behind the school in a field, prompting us to turn around and go back to the school for shelter.

Those two men did an amazing job with this coverage, knowing full well that this was merely a prelude to one of the worst days in Alabama state history. They saved a lot of lives that day, and deserve a ton of respect.

3:01:18 "ready for school, don't worry about that. If the principal gets mad, tell him to call me" Me: IM DEAD XD

My family and I are survivors of this historic day. The tornado sirens would go for a bit then back off and on again several times in a matter of a few hours. Power was out for a week where I lived and we had damage and personal belongings that the wind carried from several hours away of the original location, from other people. You would just look up in the sky and see papers, roofs, trash, anything the tornado ate. The saddest part was talking to rescue crews and seeing them break down and cry when they told about finding body after body, especially children. Hearing it on the scanner was just as bad. Not something I want to go through ever again. I now have PTSD because of this day. Anytime a storm comes, no matter how small, I start crying and having a panic attack, even tho it's been years, makes me wonder what other poor souls go through what I do now. The ef- 5 was so close to where we live it destroyed a church that was featured on the weather channel and that was about 5 mins. From our house. Anyone who lived in Alabama, at this time, will never forget this day or forget the ones who lost their lives.

Glad this was added to the compilation. Was great work by Jason and a missing piece from the coverage of that day's events.

Thank You for getting me and everyone through that time that morning. I was visiting from NC at the time when things happen. James Spann- thank you! everyone there Thanks a bunch!

I'm so glad someone posted the early morning event of this day. The bigger outbreak later that day kind of overshadowed the morning event, but the morning event quite bad as well.

I have watched the afternoon/evening coverage several times now, but I have not gotten more than an hour or so into the morning coverage. Just to hear the desperation in their voices when they talk about what was potentially coming that afternoon.... Thank God for people like them that care and do what they can for others. Way more than just a Weatherman...

Jason is such a good presenter and I am sure viewers felt safe and reassured by him despite the severity of the situation which transpired on that day. Keeps his audience calm

So many people were without power in central Alabama when the main event fired up in the afternoon due to these early morning storms. It was a crucial event that doesn't get talked about that much.

Chilling how James predicted that there would be a major tornado outbreak in the afternoon. The man knew. I don't think he realized how bad but he knew it would be bad.

If there was no James I'd still feel confident in Jason. Dude was by himself didn't let pressure get to him and stayed on top of critical information. He and Spann are the perfect team to call storms.

Glad to see the morning coverage finally up. What a day that was!

Been looking for this for months, thank you so much for this upload, as well as the afternoon coverage. Great job.

This is one I’ll never forget. But Jason and James are amazing for lives they saved that day.

I've been looking for this. What a brutal warm-up to the worst tornado outbreak of the 21st century.

Jason and James both did a phenomenal job reporting this while maintaining calmness and professionalism. My heart goes out to the families of Alabamans who lost their lives because of these deadly storms. I remember hearing about this while studying meteorology on my own at that time and to this day this storm by far for Alabama was the worst.

Jason did an absolutely amazing job being on top of the situation very early. With that many tornadoes lives are guaranteed to be lost. Many many more would have been lost had Jason or James not have caught this threat and told people early to take cover long before the threat was real. These folks are true legends. If I am correct, this outbreak tore Jason apart mentally and emotionally and he did move on from meteorology. I may be wrong. For those who think these guys aren't heroes (if you have a conscience) Imagine seeing these monsters going through towns and cities, begging with people to take shelter long before the tornadoes reached them, knowing that people are dying. Gary England put it plainly in a documentary of the Moore Oklahoma tornado... We absolutely knew people were dying, we just didn't know how many. Imagine having to deal with that mentally. James Spann constantly mentions the number 225. This represents the people who died "on his watch". Well over 10 years later he still repeats that number daily.

I admire the courage these men have! To be up at 3:30 am and doing a broadcast from then until EVERYTHING is over is a really hard task! Especially when the storms are on top of them and their own families. And they stay calm! This is how meteorologists should act during a storm! Excellent jod Jason and James!

Jason an amazing guy reporting on the storms and knowledgeable countyand infrastructures. Jason and James right mix to the station.

Jason is working for Huntsville now. I imagine he could have gone just about anywhere after this. To be mentored by James Spann is an honor. To be under his wing ...AND HOLD HIS OWN .... during an event like this? He is a blessing to this state.

About a hour and 30 minutes in the thing restarts so then skip to 2:22:32

To this day, I remember this once of a lifetime super outbreak very well. I lived in Knoxville, Tennessee at that time on April 27th and we had a moderate risk of severe storms including tornadoes, large hail and even damaging winds. These storms were so widespread that so many rounds kept coming due to so much tornado warnings going off that afternoon to late morning. It was so bad out there that schools and businesses had to be let out early due to the weather. We an hour and a half from the high risk zone because that's where Knoxville and the rest of East Tennessee had saw destructive tornadoes but also very large hail for most of the time. Thousands lost power during the magnitude of these 2nd to 4th or 5th rounds of these storms. My family and I had to stay at a family friend's home for the remainder of the outbreak so we can seek shelter in a closet or bathroom in an apartment building when the lights started to flicker. Thankfully we made it through to the next day coz far south and west it was much much more worse than Knoxville itself as we had the interior of those bad storms. Luckily we weren't in the high risk area, but we were still in the moderate risk area because it meant serious business as well; had the city been under a high risk, us people wouldn't even make it out alive or been injured by the tornadoes and very large hail to destructive straight line winds and Knoxville fully wouldn't be prepared to face the wrath of strong or violent long track tornadoes round after round. High risk means very very serious attention and business because those are very life threatening and dangerous to let your guard down with these storms and same for moderate risk as well.. these storms are the strongest magnitude of their kind when it comes to tornado season being in the interior of February to early July with March, April, May and June being the worst tornado months on record that may include high risk of severe storms a few times in those months or in a year.. Best advice, Never let your guard down on high, moderate and now enhanced risk of severe storms because those are very dangerous and pose life threatening to life and property!!! #Stay safe y'all and protect you and your families & loved ones from these once in a lifetime super outbreak events

At 1:46:34, he metions Hackleburg, which would be leveled by an EF5 tornado that afternoon.

This brings back so many horrible memories. Cordova got hit HARD in the morning and even worse in the afternoon. Had it not been for our NOAA weather radio we would of never got the second warning. I was in jasper on the second half of the storms with my mom and we were standing outside while the second tornado came through Cordova and we were watching the sky and you could see stuff falling out of the sky and then all of a sudden it was sucked back up and went flying again. There was a milk carton that fell from the sky. It was just the craziest thing I’ve ever seen and the tornado was like 12 miles away.

3:01:02 to 3:01:21 is the hallmark of this coverage.

Every weather nerd in America knows James Spann. He is without a doubt right at the top of the meteorologist hall of fame. But I can't say with enough emphasis how well Jason Simpson handled the first round of these storms. He was clear, he was direct and never let himself get lost even when he was tracking 4 or 5 storms at the same time. Then, he stayed on for the entire weather event that started at 3pm. Dude was on the air close to 20 hours! I was so sorry to see him move on but...he was too good to play back up weatherman...even to Spann. I think he's a chief some place now.

Jason is really the man...he pretty much ran the whole thing on his own for 3 hours. epic.

As many have said, if not for what happened in the afternoon, this line of storms would have been national news. As it happened, it was completely overshadowed. This thing clobbered North Alabama from Florence to Georgia!

3:01:17 greatest line ever uttered by a weatherman

Until this year 2021 I was unaware how much this event affected the weather in the upper Midwest that summer. Had heard on the news about the event but since it wasn't on my doorstep and I didn't put one & one together until very recently. Both Jason and James are one-offs. I've watched the full coverage of this event numerous times as well as this video.

Mornings event: Principal gets mad tell them to call me. Primary afternoon and evening event: All you can do is pray for those people.

i love jason and i’m so thankful he came to WHNT in huntsville.

It's crazy to see that we're nearly 9 years later since the Super Outbreak of 2011.. I was in Knoxville, Tennessee at that time when we dealt with the storms like everyone else, but luckily they let out school early in time before the storms hit

Long, long day in Alabama. I gotup and was driving to work at 6:30 AM that morning and saw trees down and we had the worst coming. We watched it all day as one tornado after another dropped. I came home early and called my parents and friend as I was watching the Tuscaloosa tornado head my way and told them I will call you in an hour..or I wont. I love you all. Lost 2 great friends this day. One of the most disastorous days in American history but doesn't get talked about because it happened in Miss and Alabama. Had this happened in NYC we'd have a national holiday for it. There was zero relief efforts except from people with Bama connections..ie Bo Jackson. The rest of the country didn't care.

Everything about this day is just so surreal, how everything seemed to work in lock step with each other: The early morning squall line, which the Midday squall line followed, and then the supercells

Jason was getting emotional because it hit one of his relatives home. Very tough to be on tv doing coverage

I lived in Clarksville TN at the time. I was very afraid I was going to go into labor during all of this. I slept on my couch for a week plus with my TV on. I have never spent as much time in my tornado safe place than this year. My daughter was born one week later on the 5th. I couldn't volunteer to help so I sent lots of prayers that way.

I watched the afternoon coverage live (almost 11 years ago now!) I come back to this every April

Without a doubt, morning storms left boundaries that the afternoon storms were able to ride and strengthen to catastrophic proportions

3:01:18 James Spann is a savage.

On such a historical day these 3 worked so flawlessly together to get life saving information out and to get weather information out to warn people not only about that round but the secondary threat later on that which we all know firsthand was terrible

Amazing job, Jason.

3:01:18 lol

The Weather Channel's "Torcon" index for northern Alabama that day was a 10, meaning a 100 percent chance of a tornado within 40-50 miles of one's location. It was the first time since that index was created that a Torcon Index of 10 had ever been issued for any location. I don't think there's been (as of March, 2018) another Torcon Index of 10 ever issued by that network anywhere in the United States.

Jason Simpson is a champ

I’m glad I woke for a workout at 5:30 that morning to catch this when it was coming. Fortunately, it hit above my area on Hwy 280 which we later found out was a tornado in Cahaba heights. I never thought I’d ever see every red light completely black at one time. Going to work was fun that day 😆

I remember this day like it was yesterday we had an E.F. 4 tornado

Remember this day the day I will never forget it’s was very emotional 😭

The mega tornado outbreak of the 21st century. That was the day I would never forget because I knew there were lots of tornadoes expected across the South.. Not only my city (Knoxville, Tennessee) and the rest of the eastern parts of Tennessee, Virginia, Georga, and the Carolinas were all under a moderate risk of severe storms, but Chattanooga and southern parts of Tennessee, all of Alabama, Mississippi, and parts of western Georgia were each under a high risk of severe storms, including a major tornado outbreak within the deep bullseye of North Alabama, East Mississippi, Southern Tennessee and western Georgia. There were three rounds of severe storms, the first wave that knocked out power to a quarter million people in Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi that caused the NOAA weather transmitter sites to be out of service for the remainder of the outbreak but also caused people in the dark not to have any warnings of approaching tornadoes later on, the second wave that produce couple more tornadoes in mid morning, and last the final wave that produced dozens and dozens of strong and violent tornadoes across the South, including 4 of them EF5 that caused massive power failures and outages due to many transmission lines or towers being knocked down and caused widespread blackouts across parts of the South, namely the transmission towers being toppled near the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant that lost external power and 3 reactors being scrammed. The 2011 Super Outbreak was responsible for over 300 tornado deaths, 20+ lightning or flash flooding deaths and over thousands of injuries and millions of dollars in damage. This gives you a complete example on why the Dixie Alley, a secondary tornado alley, is vulnerable to strong and violent tornadoes due to them being wrapped in rain and difficult to see because of very high instability, CAPE values, water vapor and extreme wind shear from the nearby warm Gulf of Mexico and cold air aloft from the North and Rocky Mountains. 9 to 10 times out of 10 there are lots of HP or high precipitation supercells across the Deep South and eastern United States.

I was in 6th grade when this happened. I wasn't in the morning storms, given that I was in Georgia , but when the afternoon-evening storms happened and the tornado left Alabama, I saw trees in the back yard blowing hard, I told mom and since it was raining she blew it off as that. A few minutes later, we had to go into the hallway and my mom was holding the kitchen door closed. I had to get my sister and niece. Then, about 30 minutes later,granddad walked in with McDonalds. (No that's not a joke.) and dad was still in the bedroom. I remember at one point, the EAS mispronounced my town name. . Yeah we lost power that night but we didn't get hit,thank god. I certainly hope an event like this never happens again.

The 67 dislikes are the tornados

I feel bad for anyone with sleep problems who finally went to sleep but had to wake back up because of the storm warning.

I lived in MS on this day. I was 5 months pregnant with my first child.. I had lived through Hurricanes in Florida. I would rate this day up there in terms of fear for me. I was driving leaving my job when we heard about the storms. And then the subsequent damage in Tuscaloosa etc.. such a sad tragic day.

Remember this day when you went outside you could tell the weather was going to be bad . Could not breathe

Excellent coverage! Does anyone know if J.B. Elliott's live coverage on the radio (that Jason mentions here) is available anywhere?

I was 6 when this happen, I had no idea what the hell was going on, I remember being outside, waiting for my parents, They came late, we were kept in the hallway and I had no idea why, then the power went out and Target, the customer there looked like they were stocking for the apocalypse, then we went to Gulf Shores until the power came back on

Great job by 2 pros. But as for the state of Alabama, why not just close the damn schools? All the school delays and closings did was add more chaos to an already horrible situation. At the first mention of tornadoes, I can assure you my kids would not have even had to think about school. And as for any parent who thought it would be smart to get out in the storms to drop kids off at school, that is just sad.

This is my favorite news station on The Citadel.

I like how the camera has its own sort of static noise to it, I can hear it whenever the camera is zooming in and stuff on the tower cam.

Awesome coverage!

Jason's family, I believe it was some aunts/uncles/cousins did get hit by a tornado that morning. It's been a while since I've seen the interview but the family farm was hit. His uncle texted him saying that it was on top of them or going to hit them, and it wasn't until a couple hours later that Jason finally heard they were okay. I apologize if I got any of that wrong but that's the jist of it.

Little known fact, all weather models this day totally missed the morning event.. I think they were expecting some storms but the models missed the severity .. caught all meteorologists off guard

A thunderstorm passed over me and the same storm an hour later produced a tornado

There's a really good book that came out about ten years ago about the Super Outbreak of April, 03 - 06, 1974. It's called 'F-05' and focuses to a great extent on the experiences of those in Northern Alabama.

Anyone notice the footage loop back on itself in the middle of the video?

This coverage should go in weather archive saved a lot of lives this terrible day

I was in Knoxville we weren’t hit too bad but I remember me and my family plus all my dogs huddled in the bathroom all night the worst touchdown near us was an f3-f4 in the Smokey mountains I don’t know if there were any touchdowns In Knoxville I think only a few were reported but it was definitely something I won’t forget.

Lovely Spann! Wonderful Spann!

3:02:54 you can see the power go out.

There were 5 people that died during this morning round of severe storms alone. Watching on the 13th anniversary.

1:01:20 those areas had no idea what would happen later that day.

The two tornadoes that hit Cordova in Walker county just missed my neighborhood. I live in Parrish, the afternoon tornado came over my house.

@ altfactor: Louisville, Kentucky was struck by a tornado on March 02, 2012 as well as June 22, 2011.

Jason Simpson is VERY good. He is experienced and knowledgeable.

I remember when this happened, (I was in 3rd grade) and we went to school after the bad morning storms, and about 30 minutes after I got there we had to go to the hallway and do the dreaded tornado position. Then when I got home more storms. We lost power for 2 days (then we got a generator) without the generator we would have lost power for at least a week.

Can you add a video of tornado at greensburg

I'm surprised any school districts in these areas were open at all. Personally, i wouldn't want my kid out of my reach on a weather day like this. I would want to know where they were on a moment's notice when this day's shit goes down.

For anyone who doesn't come down to this state: this kind of stuff (tornadoes in general, I mean) is fairly common. Every season has at least a small risk of producing one, and the collective reaction can usually be summed up as, “Ah, shit, here we go again.” I say this to emphasize just how bad *this* was. My family and I were some of the lucky ones; we didn't even lose power. A lot of other folks weren’t so fortunate, as I learned firsthand from helping one of my dad’s coworkers clear out the wreckage of his former home. He and his family were okay, thankfully, but the house was utterly pulverized. So yeah. That was a day that won’t soon be forgotten.

wow that lightning looks killer

Nashville was spared that day do to the mcv moving so far north, and that early morning round laying out the cold pool for the main event

10 years ago. Wow, it's been so long, and we're supposed to have another outbreak today.