The Day of the Tornadoes

The Day of the Tornadoes By Elton Camp April 27, 2011 is a day we’ll long recall When natural disaster on Alabama did fall The weather bureau warned us days before And nobody ignores the forecasts anymore Every family decides on the best place to go And listens carefully to the NOAA radio The Huntsville TV stations see storm afar With the wonderful help of Doppler radar The outbreak began at three in the morning A few hours later than the original warning As the frightening day continued to progress We saw that we were in for a terrible mess The dire announcements came at a fast clip As across the state many tornadoes did skip By later afternoon, desperation had set in The authorities hardly knew where to begin The meteorologists all did seriously allow Get into your safe place and please do it now And because of the excellent job that they do Deaths from tornadoes recently have been few But in some cases, in order to still be around It was essential that people go underground Without such protection it’s hard to stay alive When one is hit by a tornado rated F-4 or F-5 Shelters like that are rarely needed so are few People had make out with what they could do The tornadoes struck with a roar and a grind And of houses only rubble was then left behind It was something we saw over thirty years before Once again, there were injuries and deaths galore Then the ferocious winds had no mind to decide Good, bad, old, strong, young—all of them died That day that from survivors’ memory won’t fade Also how people gave to each other needed aid The area will recover, though it seems it can’t be Due to the devastation from nature’s killing spree