(VIDEO) Eyewitness, Ground-Level Views of Tornadoes in Tuscaloosa, Alabama

by the Left Coast Rebel

Eyewitness videos shot at ground level yesterday, during the tornadoes that ravaged the Tuscaloosa, Oklahoma area. In this video you can hear the eyewitness (in his/her car) breathing heavily, it's pretty obvious that the tornado may have headed straight for the car that they are in:

This one was shot by Youtube user Jason835a, described as, "This video is from the EF4 tornado that went through Tuscaloosa, AL on 4/27/11. It was taken from the University Mall parking lot. Probably the closest video to the storm your going to see." Again, it sure looks to me like the twister could have headed straight for him, too (and then it does and he speeds away, check the 3:00 mark for true insanity):

An eyewitness caught this footage from his cellphone vidcam as the tornado towers over the stadium in Tuscaloosa, Oklahoma:

The Associated Press reports:

PLEASANT GROVE, Ala. (AP) -- Dozens of tornadoes spawned by a powerful storm system wiped out neighborhoods across a wide swath of the South, killing at least 201 people in the deadliest outbreak in nearly 40 years, and officials said Thursday they expected the death toll to rise.

Alabama's state emergency management agency said it had confirmed 131 deaths, while there were 32 in Mississippi, 16 in Tennessee, 13 in Georgia, eight in Virginia and one in Kentucky.

The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said it received 137 tornado reports around the regions into Wednesday night."We were in the bathroom holding on to each other and holding on to dear life," said Samantha Nail, who lives in a blue-collar subdivision in the Birmingham suburb of Pleasant Grove where the storm slammed heavy pickup trucks into ditches and obliterated tidy brick houses, leaving behind a mess of mattresses, electronics and children's toys scattered across a grassy plain where dozens used to live. "If it wasn't for our concrete walls, our home would be gone like the rest of them."

Dave Imy, a meteorologist with the prediction service, said the deaths were the most in a tornado outbreak since 1974, when 315 people died.

In Alabama, where as many as a million people were without power, Gov. Robert Bentley said 2,000 national guard troops had been activated and were helping to search devastated areas for people still missing. He said the National Weather Service and forecasters did a good job of alerting people, but there is only so much that can be done to deal with powerful tornadoes a mile wide.

One of the hardest-hit areas was Tuscaloosa, a city of more than 83,000 and home to the University of Alabama. A massive tornado, caught on video by a news camera on a tower, barreled through late Wednesday afternoon, leveling the city.

Via Google Trends and Memeorandum, cross posted to LCR.