A Cold December Alabama Morning

Not a historic record cold morning but it was below freezing in almost all of Alabama’s 67 counties. Here is a list, including reports from 3340 Skywatchers and official regular reporting stations and NWS Coop observers:

19 Hamilton
20 Pinson
22 Concord/Hueytown, 9 miles north of Fayette, Dora, Muscle Shoals
23 Moody, Coker, Scrougeout, Huntsville, Addison, Jasper, Lafayette, Livingston
24 Winfield, Cullman, Tuscaloosa, Sylacauga
25 Muscadine, Birmingham
26 Gardendale/Mount Olive, Bessemer, Alexander City, Cordova
27 Anniston, Shelby County Airport, Montgomery, Oneonta
28 Springville, Mobile, Clayton
29 Selma
31 Dothan, Noccalula Falls

HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE SYLACAUGA?
I was working the midnight shift at the NWS, 11 West Oxmoor Road one night in the 70s or 80s (can’t remember which) There had been some wind damage (or possibly a small tornado) at Sylacauga. The story, I assume, went out on the AP wire. Just before daybreak, I took a phone call from the ABC Radio Network in New York wanting to know how to pronounce Sylacauga for their early edition of World News. I pronounced it for them slowly several times and they seemed to master it.

I flipped the radio on at 7 am to listen. It came out over the air something like this:

” Seal-a-Cogger-Gow.”

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