How one tornado put a station on the map and forever changed weather coverage in Alabama

James Spann can still remember 25 years later how he felt preparing to go on the air that fateful day: April 8, 1998.

"We knew going into the day that this could be the night that just might put us on the map."

Spann joined ABC 33/40 soon after its launch two years earlier. He came here with the intent to cover tornadoes in a way which had not been done before in the State of Alabama.

"I had the green light," Spann explained, "I've never had the green light in my entire career. By green light I mean I had the full right to go on the air and stay on the air as long as I thought it was necessary to protect life."

Thousands would find themselves in danger as the strongest tornado to touchdown in the state in two decades tore a 30-mile path of destruction through Tuscaloosa and Jefferson counties that night. Spann and the viewers watched together as one of the ABC 33/40 tower cameras captured the moment the part of the power grid was cut off by the tornado.

"I think it really hit us when we started to see that video coming back from John Oldshue and Bill Castle in the field, where they had some just horrific scenes that they dealt with and they were basically shifting from being photographers and meteorologists and reporters to first responders, and we knew at this point this is bad."

Spann had lured Oldshue to ABC 33/40 to serve as the station's weekend meteorologist with the promise of extensive severe storm coverage. Soon they agreed Oldshue's best fit would be chasing the storms and relaying information back to Spann. A plan that until then had never been put to the test.

"I have never seen anything like it. I had never been in a major tornado," Oldshue recalled.

Oldshue and Castle, the station's chief photographer, soon found themselves amid the damage.

"Something doesn't seem right," Oldshue recalled thinking. "It seemed lighter than it should be and what had happened Stephen is the F-5 tornado had debarked all the pine trees in this pine forest right next to this house, and a full moon was out and it was reflected off the white of the bark."

While the damage to the trees was amazing to behold, the damage to the homes in the area left survivors largely cut off from help. Shocked survivors began to emerge from the wreckage as Oldshue was reporting live on air. The young meteorologist soon realized the moment was bigger than simply a news story.

"These are where people may have died," he recalled thinking at that moment. "I didn't know what I was going to do. It kind of freaked me out. I got back in the weather van kind of had to hyper ventilate for a second."

Oldshue used his Ham Radio License to communicate information to first responders trying to reach the scene. Castle began loading victims into news vehicles which would be used as makeshift ambulances to help some of the 250 people who were injured.

32 other people were killed that night from the tornado including 8-year-old Nathan Seals. Doctors later determined Seals died from blunt force head trauma after being lofted by the tornado. They believe the boy would have survived by simply wearing a helmet.

"This was a precious child that would be a young adult now," Spann recalled. He still regularly communicates with Nathan's father, Matthew Seals, who has since dedicated his life to promoting helmet safety during severe weather. It would also become a key facet of Spann's weather safety message. It is both an important message backed by scientific data and also a way he chooses to honor the family he has never forgotten.

"Out of all of the funerals, storm-related funerals that I've seen, that was so hard. You had the casket and you had the (Seals) family brought in by paramedics because of their wounds, but they wanted to be there for the funeral of their son and their brother."

The tornado left a 30-mile path of damage before lifting just a few miles short of Birmingham.

"If this would not have lifted around Pratt City, this would have come through areas in downtown Birmingham just north of Interstate 59/20. It would have hit the BJCC, this thing would have taken out the Birmingham airport," Spann said.

The cell later spawned an EF-2 tornado in St. Clair County which killed two more people. Still the true legacy of the storm exists in the changes it helped create: The genesis of helmet safety during tornadoes and the idea of staying in long-form coverage whenever a tornado warning is issued in the viewer market.

"I knew, I knew after this happened that what we did with that long-form coverage, that was going to set the standard and change everything for this market and it did. And I'm glad that it did.'