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| Tuesday, February 9, 2010 |
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A day to remember
Published February 6, 2009
It dropped out of the sky a year ago today with little warning at a time when most people were still sleeping or just getting out of bed to prepare for another day.
The tornado, an EF-4 that packed winds of 180 MPH, struck just southeast of Pisgah at 5:17 a.m., 13 minutes after a warning had been issued for parts of Jackson and DeKalb counties. A tornado watch had been in effect since 10 a.m. on Feb. 5 and was to continue until 7 a.m. on Feb. 6.
The storm, estimated at 660 yards wide, stayed on the ground for 12 minutes. In its wake it left an 11-mile-path of destruction from Pisgah, through parts of Rosalie and in areas near Flat Rock. One person, Linda Tinker, was killed, at least a dozen more injured and property damage reached into the millions of dollars.
"It has been a tough year," Tim Marona said in a Wednesday interview with The Daily Sentinel. "But except for some yard work and connecting a light in the foyer we're back at home."
The storm leveled the Marona's solidly built, brick, ranch-style home on County Road 58 to little more than a pile of rubble less than head high. Vehicles parked outside the house were tossed hundreds of feet across pasture land adjacent to the home.
As the tornado approached Marona and his family quickly huddled in a hallway in the middle of the house. Except for a few scrapes and bruises, Marona, his wife, Angie, and daughter, Alley, emerged unscathed.
"God was watching over us. That's the only way we survived," Angie said while surveying the damage in a slight drizzle, brisk breeze and rapidly falling temperatures several hours after the storm.
"Our faith has increased," Tim said Wednesday. "If it wasn't for God we wouldn't be here today."
But while the Marona's are happy with their new home and glad life is back to some sense of normalcy, all is not well.
"It's terrifying," Angie said of any severe weather threat. "It doesn't matter if it's just wind or a storm."
"We immediately begin flipping channels if the weather radio goes off," Tim said.
And Alley, who simply said, "Call 911," after crawling out of the debris and seeing her home a year ago is the same way. She still gets scared when any type of bad weather approaches.
Even Goldie the dog, a playful aptly-named golden retriever, is changed. It doesn't take much prodding to coax her into the garage when wind or rain approach.
"She gets scared, terrified," Tim said. "I guess I would too if I had seen what she saw last year."
Goldie was outside when the storm struck. The Maronas don't know where Goldie was or how she survived. They are just glad she came back home hours after the tornado hit.
The storm, the second strongest on the Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF-1 to EF5) that measures the strength of tornadoes, was the most powerful of 30 that struck in the National Weather Service Huntsville 14-county weather forecasting area in 2008. The next strongest, spawned by the same system, occurred in parts of Lawrence and Morgan counties earlier on the same day. That tornado packed 170 MPH winds, was one-half mile wide and stayed on the ground for an estimated 16.7 miles.
In the past 134 years only 11 EF-3 and EF-4 tornadoes have developed over the forecast area in February. A mere three-percent (8) of a total of 278 documented tornadoes in the Huntsville region have been rated EF-4 since 1970. An EF-3 storm is termed capable of producing severe damage. EF-4 storms are defined as being able to cause devastating damage.
The system that spawned the storm began on Feb. 5 in the Mid-South producing multiple tornadoes in five states. At least 50 people were left dead and dozens more injured in the wake of the outbreak.
It was warm ahead of the storm system. On the morning of Feb. 5 the low temperature in Huntsville was 62. Temperatures across the region rose into the 70's by the afternoon and remained at or near 70 degrees as the tornado formed early on Feb. 6.
"It sounded like the proverbial train," Betsy Bellflower, who huddled in the hallway of her wood-framed home during the tornado, said. "It was over so quick. I tried to find a room to get out of the rain and there wasn't one."
Bellflower's home on County Road 78 was demolished. The roof was gone and only walls in the hallway remained.
Several hundred yards down the road Pete and Donna Russell's home lost its roof and was shifted on the foundation. Two sheds and a gazebo were gone and the couple's motor home was tossed about like a tinker toy and left on its side.
"It was so fast," Mrs. Russell said. "We just huddled up together and prayed to God."
Another tornado struck Jackson County in 2008. It was produced by a squall line that made its way across North Alabama in the early morning hours of Dec. 10.
The storm, rated an EF-2 by the NWS, produced maximum sustained winds of 124 MPH. Located near the Pikeville Community five miles north of Scottsboro the 300-yard wide storm stayed on the ground for 3.7 miles.
Kathy Woodfin, who lost her home on County Road 388 but not her family, summed up the Feb. 6 storm best when she said, "It could have been so much worse."
Mrs. Woodfin was on her way to her teaching job in Georgia listening to reports on the radio. Her husband, Byron, and son, Eric, survived.
"Everybody survived. I'm grateful," Mrs. Woodfin said.
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