April 27, 2011: I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil

Concord, Pell City, Reform, Birmingham, Pratt City, Cullman, Arab, Fultondale, Pisgah, Sawyerville, Piedmont, Talledega, Marshall. Tuscaloosa. Above all, Tuscaloosa.

On April 27th, 2011, from 4,281 miles away, I watched the heart of my hometown die.

And, with its death, so too would vanish 234 neighbors, relatives, and Alabamians -- devoured, disappeared, destroyed by a mindless, implacable horror from the sky.

"The Tuscaloosa-Birmingham EF4 tornado threw mobile homes 300 yards away, turned appliances into shrapnel, and made automobiles unrecognizable." - NWS, Jackson.

The meteorological scale of what we witnessed that day can scarcely be understated.