Five Years Later: A Look Back on the Series of Tornadoes on April 27, 2011

In 2011, a string of tornadoes took hundreds of lives, injured thousands and destroyed over $10 billion making it the costliest tornado outbreak in U.S. history. People called it the "Super Outbreak," one of the worst tornado outbreaks in U.S history.

In April of that year, there were more than 120 reported tornadoes. This became one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in the nation's history. Five years later, survivors who are still rebuilding what was destroyed, say their lives will never be the same again. According to oregonlive.com, casualties were reported from different states in the Southern United States.

The first of four EF5 tornadoes that was recorded on the 27^th of April raked though east-central Mississippi, leaving some unimaginable damage in its wake. In the Northeastern part of Philadelphia, Mississippi, a swath of ground was wiped out clean out to a depth of two feet, in some places. The tornado even ripped sections of asphalt from a road off.

The Weather Channel said that meteorologist and researcher Jon Davies blogged about the rarity of seeing such extreme values of shear and unstable air. Typically, any high values of one are at least somewhat tempered by lower values of another. Not on April 27. In May 2011, Davies wrote, "I've looked through my own databases of tornado cases over the past decade, and can't find any tornado environment that even approaches this one."

But the most unforgettable live coverage of this Super Outbreak was the split screen shown on ABC in Birmingham Alabama, showing both a live camera of a wedge tornado roaring through Tuscaloosa, Alabama as meteorologist James Spann was showing the classic hook echo and debris ball (indicating of tornado-lofted debris) on radar.

The EF4 tornado took 65 lives along an 80-mile path from Greene County through Tuscaloosa, Alabama into the northern suburbs of Birmingham in a matter of about 90 minutes. Despite the death toll, there have also been a huge number of lives that were saved by timely National Weather Service warnings, and the considerable effort of the media to pass on those warnings.

Survivors said that no tornado warnings or emergency plans could have prepared them for what the tornado had brought them. John Nero, 58, lost his home of 20 years when the tornado hit his Tuscaloosa neighborhood. His wife, Pam, suffered a heart attack a few days later. The couple's new home overlooks their former neighborhood. Nero sees the area whenever he opens his front door. "It used to be an apartment complex right there," he said, nodding toward a vast overgrown area. "It was flattened, but I could hear people hollering."