Govt Tide

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Who lets them know what is the "overall urban designated area" of a city?

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Good question. The U.S. Census Bureau has both metropolitan statistical area designations as well as urban defined area designations. A city's urban area designation includes all the contiguous suburban area towns municipalities, and unincorporated areas surrounding a given city. A city's urban area ends where the continously development either ends and gives way to rural areas or when it runs into the urban designated area of a separate distinct nearby city.

MSAs (metropolitan statistical areas), on the hand, differ from "urban areas" in that they include the population of both the core county a given city is located in as well as the population of all surrounding counties where at least 25% of the surrounding county's working population commutes into the core county to work.

The population of an American city's deignated urban area is typically much smaller or is usually at least considerably smaller than the population of its MSA. Judging the metrics of a city's urban designated area provides a truer measure of a city's relative strengths and weakness than in my opinion than a measure of its entire metro population.

This is why for example you see a lot of Texas cities that are part of larger Texas metros listed individually apart from those metro areas on this ranking list. Plano, Sugar Land, Round Rock, and New Braunfels are Texas cities with their own distinct urban area designations that are separate from the larger metropolitan areas they are a part of. Cities like Hoover, AL and Franklin, TN for example are considered part of the Birmingham and Nashville designated urban areas respectively which is why both of those cities were able to make the Top 250 places to live ranking list but not able to make this rankings list

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Has to be way out in the burbs, I hate that damn city

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Although the ranking only lists the "city proper" population of each city it takes into account the metrics of the overall urban designated area of a city which helps boost the ranking of some of the cities on this list which would rank much lower if only the city limits of the city was considered.

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Montgomery is on this list but not Vestavia Hills? Um,sure.

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I agree and have no idea why Vestavia Hills doesn't get any love on lists like this. It's arguably the 2nd nicest suburb in B'ham behind Mountain Brook and also has the 2nd best metrics when it comes to quality of public school quality, average home prices, average incomes, quality of life behind Mountain Brook. It has over 34.000 residents so it meets the population criteria for the list. Mt Brook only has 21,000 residents btw so it's under the 25k population threshold. Fairhope, AL had just under 25,000 residents in the 2020 census which is probably why it didn't make the list while Daphne, AL at just under 27,000 (as of 2020) did.

Montgomery, AL sucks but it has slightly less s###ty areas overall than some of the places you mentioned. It's high end is slightly lower than some of those places too though. I think Montgomery gets a boost from having two or three surprisingly good public middle and high schools. I was shocked to see that a couple of high schools in the city are among the Top 400 high schools in the country. That aside, I don't think it has any business being ranked among the 250 best places to live in the country though.

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I think Bama’s 2020 title is as legit as anyone’s and have no problem with it.

However, I do think it is beyond stupid to put the GOAT conversation as some have done.

They were great in a difficult year but they are not in the same category as 2019 LSU.

Hell, I don’t think they were as good as 2019 Bama (or other great Saban teams at Bama)

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I have no problem with 2019 LSU being in the conversation for greatest team in modern college football history. That team had one of the greatest seasons if not THE greatest season in modern college football history.

The 2019 LSU team arguably had the greatest offense season statistically against a tough schedule in modern college football history but to argue that the 2020 Alabama team is not in the same league is absurd.

I think what gets lost in all the chaos and weird circumstances surrounding the 2020 Covid season is just how good that 2020 Alabama team was statistically. As a matter of fact, that 2020 Alabama team compares very favorably with the 2019 LSU statistically.

Here's a statistical comparison of the 2020 Alabama and 2019 LSU teams:

Average points per game:

2020 Alabama - 48.46 ppg
2019 LSU - 48.4 ppg

Average points per game allowed:

2020 Alabama - 19.38 ppg
2019 LSU - 21.86 ppg

Average margin of victory:

2020 Alabama - 29.08 ppg
2019 LSU - 26.54 ppg

Granted, LSU put those offensive numbers up over 15 games as opposed to only 13 games in Alabama's case and did it in some tough road and neutral environments but it isn't as if LSU's 2019 offense put up offensive scoring numbers that clearly blew away the offensive scoring numbers that Alabama's 2020 offense put up. The main difference between the two teams that make it seem as if the LSU offense was head and shoulders better offensively than Alabama's 2020 offense was the incredibly dominant and historic season that Joe Burrow had statistically along with the fact that Alabama's 2020 offense didn't lean quite as heavily on Mac Jones as LSU leaned on Joe Burrow.

Bottom line is that the 2019 LSU team and the 2020 Alabama team were much more similar statistically than many LSU fans realize or care to admit.

I'd still give a slight nod to the 2019 LSU team over the 2020 Alabama team based on doing what they did in full stadiums and some tough road environments but it's still close

I guess w'ell just have to make due with the back to back Top 3 recruitng classes from 2025 and 2026 before the wheels inevitably fall off

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Shug Jordan and Bear Bryant.

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Bear Bryant - never met but an obvious legend. Enlisted and served in WW2 in the Navy rising to the rank of Luietenant Commander

Shug Jordan - A gentlemen and a badass. Served in 4 different theaters in WW2 and was wounded by German shrapnel during the invasion of Utah Beach in WW2. Rose to the rank of Major

Louisiana

See if this link works. You should be able to change the state from the link

Alabama

Two of the scariest audios from a tornado came from the Tuscaloosa tornado and the Joplin tornado respectively.

The audio from the video of the group of people who hunkered down in the storage area of a convenience store that got hit by the edge of the Joplin tornado is hard to listen to. Everyone survived but the sounds of the roar and day turning into night outside was intense.

The other was a group of UA students who peaked outside their apartment in Tuscaloosa seeing the E4 heading directly at them and they're all huddled together and again...the roar of the tornado and the shouts. They ended up safely buried up under a stairwell that held up a flipped over SUV and most of the apartmrnt building they were in from collapsing down on them and crushing them.

Made the mistake of going down the rabbit hole of a couple of heavily video documented natural disasters recently and my algorithm is flooded with them (no pun intended)...

What video documented natural disaster fascinates or horrifies you the most? For me it's probably the 2011 Japanese tsunami. The videos from that event are absolutely mind blowing. What made this tsunami so scary was how quickly and stealthily the sea level rose without it being obvious until it was too late. Then once the sea level topped the sea protective sea walls in many of the harbors the massive surge with even higher waves on top followed sending a massive powerful raging river of water well inland sweeping homes, large buildings, huge ships, and mountains of debris raging throughout the city. Can't imagine how horrifying it would have been first and most obviously to the unfortunate people caught up and swept away and then to the survivors who watched their city being totally destroyed knowing their homes and businesses were being destroyed and knowing many of their family members and friends were being killed. Can't imagine some of the horrible things survivors saw in the immediate aftermath of that disaster.

On a personal level, I didn't lose any property or loved ones in either the April 27th, 2011 Super Outbreak or Hurricane Katrina like some of you on TD did but I did have family and friends who lived in both those areas when those two disasters occurred. My father lived near Lake Tuscaloosa during the 2011 Super Outbreak and although he and I weren't personally affected he did an impromptu ride along to relieve a firefighter/first responder whose wife was going into labor a couple of days after the Tuscaloosa tornado and actually helped carry 3 dead bodies out of one of the hard hit neighborhoods off 15th street. He wasn't ready for that obviously and broke down in tears heading home that night. I went up to Tuscaloosa a few days to donate some supplies and was shocked by the level of damage I saw.

My brother and SIL lived near Destrehan during Katrina and fortunately only had minor damage and no flooding where they were. They left and went to stay with family in Florida during the hurricane so they didn't experience the storm itself. My brother met my dad in Alabama and the surreal part was them having to detour way out of the normal way back from Tuscaloosa to the Destrahan area via Jackson, MS and I-55 instead of the normal route down I-59 via Hattiesburg due to I-10 being impassable in New Orleans and them carrying weapons in case of any potential looting in my brother's neighborhood. The surreal part was remembering what my brother told me only a few months earlier when we had stopped at a Rouses between New Orleans and Metairie on the way home from the French Quarter Festival that day. I asked him what that area would look like if/when "the big one" hit and he said the parking lot we were in that day would be under several feet of water and it wasn't a matter of if that would happen but when. It still gives me chills knowing that it actually happened only a few months later.

P.S. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was far deadlier and is the deadliest natural disaster ever documented but there aren't nearly as many videos of that disaster as there are of the 2011 Japanese tsunami.