Long read, but definitely worth it:
When I lived in Alabama (for a year), my family and the house we were renting at the time were victims of the infamous Palm Sunday tornado outbreak (March 27, 1994).
It was almost dinner time and my family was just about to sit down to a meal of brisket and potatoes - one of my favorites. We were all sitting in the family room watching Jerry Tracey (the NBC weatherman), and he said that the strong storms wouldn't pose much of a problem for the metro-Birmingham area. Having lived in Alabama for about 8 months at the time, we were pretty used to strong thunderstorms, and hail was even somewhat normal.
It had been thundering and raining for a while, and we were just about to eat when Jerry came on the screen again and said that a tornado warning had been issued for Jefferson County (we lived in Mountain Brook, in Jefferson County). Almost at that exact instant, we all turned our heads to view an amazing sight outside:
golfball sized hail was blowing into our French doors at 90 degree angles. The hailstones were literally flying at 30-40 m.p.h. at our windows, and we knew it was time to get into the basement.
We went downstairs to the garage (there was no basement, only a garage under the house) and into the storage room, which was reinforced on one side with our front yard - basically it was an underground room). My dad remembered once we got down there that he forgot flashlights, so he ran back upstairs to get some. My sister and I were screaming for him to come back downstairs, as we could see through the garage door windows that branches were being ripped from trees and rain was flying in all directions.
Finally, we saw the door to the house open up and my dad came into view. It sounded like he slammed the door on the way down, but he maintains to this day that he only shut it lightly. Either way, my sister and I heard a bang and a crack as my dad came down the stairs.
When we came upstairs after the storm had subsided, we found out what the slamming of the door really was. Our house, as we had known it, was destroyed.
The wind (probably a tornado) had uprooted a tree and thrown it onto the roof of our house. The tree smashed our chimney, and the bricks from the chimney had fallen onto our deck. The deck was destroyed - the floor of the deck was laying on the ground under numerous large branches and about 2 tons of bricks. The tree had cracked the beams in our great room (we had a vaulted ceiling, and the cracks in the beams were quite noticeable).
There was also a large chunk of drywall that had collapsed from the wall, and it was lying on the couch where my entire family had been sitting only moments before.
We spent the night at the front of our house in the living room (we weren't sure if the back was safe to be in). During the night, the tree slid off the roof, and we all ran out of the house screaming, instantly awake, because it sounded like the entire house was collapsing. We stayed in a hotel for the next few days, but the lessor refused to fix the house (we ended up taking him to court because of it and won damages). We lived in that unsafe atmosphere (with absolutely NOTHING fixed) for the next four months. We moved all our furniture to the 'safe' part of the great room for the remainder of our stay in the house.
I was terrified of thunderstorms for a long, long time, but I've finally gotten over my fear (I was 9 then, and I'm 18 now). Still, whenever I hear about a tornado or a strong storm, or I see hail, I feel that twinge of pain. It's permanently scarred me, and I'll never forget March 27, 1994.
My family has pics of it somewhere, and I'll post them when I can find them. But it's been a while, and they're probably somewhere buried under lots of stuff.
EDIT: here's a link to a meteorological analysis of the storms:
Text
Facebook
Twitter