Meteorologist James Spann is to many Alabamians the suspender-wearing sage to whom they turn when the weather gets stormy. Over his four-decade career of weather reporting, the memory of the worst of all weather days — April 27, 2011 — still haunts him.
“I went through all the phases of grief. I went through anger and depression. I was mad at God for a while,” Spann, a member of Double Oak Community Church, Birmingham, said. “It’s OK to be mad at God. It really is. After it’s over, you’ve got to pray your way through all that stuff.”
Spann’s memory of what he calls a “generational” weather event remains crystal clear.
The specter of a tornado outbreak had been stalking Alabama for the better part of a week, and with each passing day the meteorologists at Birmingham’s ABC affiliate issued more and more strident warnings.
On that fateful Wednesday morning, Spann began his day, like always, with a prayer seeking wisdom and “the right words” from God.
“You’ve got 300,000 to 400,000 people watching you, and what you say and your body language can determine if somebody makes a decision that results in them living or dying,” Spann explained. “That’s a heavy responsibility, so my prayer before every event is, ‘Lord, give me the words to say, and wisdom.’”
During any severe weathermaker, Spann’s job requires laser focus and “monster” multitasking skills.
April 27 started out no differently.
“Another meteorologist is running the equipment; I’m in front of that green wall. In front of me you’ll see a computer. I’m like an air traffic controller. I’ve got six chat sessions going with National Weather Service forecast offices, as well as chat sessions with our trained weather spotters. I’ve got multiple live streams from our people in the field looking at all of that.
“And then you’ve got to deal with social media, which is critical. … I’ve got to look at all of that and make a decision on the fly of what [I’m] gonna show on television and decide what information is credible.”
Shocking scale
Still, despite the state-of-the-art detection equipment and early warnings, even Spann and his team were shocked at the ultimate scale of the outbreak, particularly the morning storms.
“I didn’t expect it to be that bad,” he said. “We had loss of life. We had a quarter-of-a-million people without power that morning from those storms. It was a rough ride. That in itself … would have been a very significant day for the state.”
As the weather team waited for an expected afternoon wave of twisters, station engineers dealt with crippling power outages. Engineers got a downed camera back in operation just in time to document the first tornado of the afternoon in Cullman.
“That thing stayed live on that camera for like 20 minutes,” Spann recalled. “We know that the live image of that tornado saved lives.”
Historical event
During the frenetic hours of activity in the newsroom throughout that day, Spann said, “I missed the historical nature of these tornadoes. I mean, I just missed it. Which is OK. I don’t need to be hung up in the emotion. You’ve got to be laser-focused on communicating the right message.”
It was only after the last tornado tore through Alabama that Spann and his colleagues had a moment to consider the immensity of the destruction.
“But then, after it’s over, that’s the hard part,” he said. “I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think I’ve processed that day, 10 years later.
“When 252 people die on your watch, that’s pretty heavy. I’m in the process of trying to memorize all those names and their stories. These were real people at a real place and a real time.”
Spann continues to learn from the 2011 experience.
“I didn’t speak on the event for six months. I didn’t have anything to say,” he said. “But after six months, we said, ‘Let’s roll up our sleeves and find out what went wrong and let’s fix it.’
“I think the one thing we learned that day is, what I do is not enough,” Spann noted. “I’m just part of the process in the weather warning process.
“The prayer is, what am I to learn from this? And what can I do to get better?
Because something obviously went wrong. The warnings were really good for all 62 tornadoes, and yet all these people died.”
Click here to read about ways you can protect yourself during a tornado. And click here to learn more about Spann’s soon-to-be-released book, “All You Can Do Is Pray,” which shares stories of victims and survivors of the April 27, 2011, tornado outbreak.
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