April 1956 Birmingham tornado

F4 tornado
Max rating1	F4 tornado
1Most severe tornado damage; see Fujita scale

The 1956 McDonald Chapel, Alabama tornado was a deadly tornado that took place during the afternoon of April 15, 1956, across the Greater Birmingham area in Jefferson County, with damaged most severe in McDonald Chapel. Retroactively rated an F4 on the Fujita scale, which was not invented until 1971, the tornado killed 25 people and injured 200 others. While only two known tornadoes touched down across the Southeastern United States (the other occurred in northern Georgia) on that day, the Birmingham tornado produced major devastation across areas west and north of downtown Birmingham.

At 5:15 a.m. CST on April 15, the U.S. Weather Bureau office in Birmingham, Alabama, issued a bulletin that warned of the possibility that a "tornado or two" would touch down in an area covering western Tennessee, northern Mississippi, and northern Alabama—namely, Lauderdale, Limestone, Lawrence, Colbert, and Morgan Counties, plus parts of Marion, Winston, Cullman, and Madison Counties. An update at noon local time highlighted the prospects for severe thunderstorms over west-central Alabama between 1:00–7:00 p.m. CST. Hail and gusts to 60 miles per hour (97 km/h) were expected to remain the primary hazards.

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