Radar Network Closes Shoals Coverage Gap

WAAY31'S Breken Terry spoke with the Sheffield Mayor about why his city is so thankful to get extra protection from our early warning radar network.

If you live in the shoals, you know this all too well.

Sometimes tornados can touchdown without warnings.

With waay 31's new early warning radar network - we can see inside the storm faster and tell you as soon as it becomes a dangerous situation.

Take a look at one of the many reasons this is important.

In july 2015 an ef1 tornado ripped through sheffield.

The storm damaged dozens of homes including the mayors!

Because there wasn't a radar in the shoals at the time - sheffield was caught in a coverage gap.

That means there wasn't enough data available to determine if the storm was strong enough to warrant a severe thunderstorm or tornado warning.

But it's a different story there now, thanks to our radar positioned in muscle shoals.

Waay31's breken terry spoke with the sheffield mayor about why his city is so thankful to get extra protection from our early warning radar network.

Sanford- i had just gotten home that afternoon and i was standing out on the deck watching the weather and i didn't really know what was going on and i went out to the carport to see the shingles flying off the roof.

Sheffield mayor ian sanford said he saw the weather get bad but never heard a siren.

So, he walked to his back porch to get a better view of what was coming on july 14th, 2015.

Sanford- i was going to come back here and i opened the door and i said where is the water?

Then it dawned on me that my next-door neighbors pool house roof that concrete with an i-beams had blown over and was standing up right against my deck.

Stand up .

This is what mayor sanfords home looked like a day later.

He considers himself lucky.

Look at what the rest of his neighborhood looked like.

Huge trees through through dozens of homes.

Sanford- the whole neighborhood here on riverbluff drive looked like a warzone which is a cliche but that's what it looked like there were trees down everywhere across the roads.

They didn't get power back to their house for more than a week.

Sanford told me waay 31's early warning radar network will give his city more protection.

Sanford- it's a great relief this can be the difference between life and death for some folks so the better warnings we have the better weather predictions we have it gives people time to prepare.

What happened here didn't give people time to prepare.

In sheffield bt waay31.

Families in sheffield no longer fall into that large gap in radar coverage.

They are safer than ever before with the waay 31 storm tracker early warning radar network.