Update: The Birmingham Chapter of the American Red Cross has set up a page to donate to tornado relief.

04/27 Tornado in Tuscaloosa from Crimson Tide Productions on Vimeo.

A series of violent storms have blasted across Alabama over the past 12 hours and a mile wide twister just hit Tuscaloosa causing major destruction. Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox says there has been at least one fatality and damage is reported across the city.

This storm is now on course to hit Birmingham and hasn't lessened a whit in power. We have a ton of folks following the storms on livestream, twitter, facebook and other sources. This thread is for folks to pass along info, data and good wishes to all our friends and family trying to get through this.

Update: Lots of pics and video going around on Twitter and Facebook, this one shows a pretty good bit of the damage at 15th and McFarland.