Southeast storms: Trees, power lines down in Florida

Florida is bracing for weather as a huge storm system battered the South over the weekend, killing 19 people and destroying trailer homes and downed trees from Mississippi to Georgia.

|
Susan Broadbridge/Hattiesburg American/AP
The Hattiesburg Fire Station places the US flag half-staff after Saturday's tornado in Hattiesburg, Miss., Sunday.

Florida is one of several Southern states reeling from a storm system that brought heavy rains, high winds, and tornadoes to the Deep South over the weekend.

Thunderstorms, strong winds, and high surf remain in the forecast through Wednesday for Florida and Georgia, according to the National Weather Service’s Severe Weather Prediction Center. But electricity has been restored to more than 23,000 customers around Tallahassee, with no reports of tornadoes touching down in the Florida county.

This weekend was already devastating for Southern states, with at least 19 dead after several thunderstorms and tornadoes striking the region, according to CNN.

“There’s a lot of hurting people right now,” Pastor Bill Marlette of the First Baptist Church Adel in Cook County near the Florida-Georgia state line told the Associated Press in a phone interview. “There’s just a sense of shock.”

The church was sheltering more than 50 people, he said.

Georgia's rural Cook County was the site of a deadly tornado that tore through mobile home park on Sunday, killing seven people. The park had about 40 mobile homes, and roughly half were destroyed, as the tornado sheered the siding and upended homes, according to Coroner Tim Purvis.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal declared a state of emergency for seven counties in the south-central part of the state, warning that dangerous conditions persisted.

"I urge all Georgians to exercise caution and vigilance in order to remain safe and prevent further loss of life or injuries," Governor Deal said in a news release.

Southern Georgia, north and central Florida, and Alabama were placed under a “high risk” warning for the first time since 2014. Forecasters issue the weather outlook when they are very confident of a tornado outbreak. Sunday also marked just the third time since 2000 any part of Florida had been at a high-risk for severe weather, according to Patrick Marsh, the warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

“This is a pretty rare event in this location,” Dr. Marsh told the Associated press on Sunday. “Any time the SPC issues a high-risk, for me, it’s sobering. We’re coming to work and there’s a strong likelihood that people’s lives will forever be changed.”  

Florida has seen less damage than Georgia. Forecasters said the storms hadn’t caused as much damage in Florida as hurricane Hermine in September, the first hurricane to land on the state in more than a decade. This weekend’s weather caused minor flooding across Florida’s panhandle and downed trees and power lines across the state. A funnel cloud, a precursor to a tornado, was spotted over Daytona International Speedway, but there were no reports of tornadoes, according to Volusia County Emergency Management Director Jim Judge.

In addition to the damage in nearby Georgia, Mississippi, southern Louisiana, and Alabama were also hit hard by the storm. A pre-dawn tornado on Saturday killed at least four people in Hattiesburg, Miss. The tornado, which registered winds above 130 miles-per-hour and tore a 25-mile path across southern Mississippi, was especially dangerous, since it struck in the middle of the night.

Storms are also expected to move up the Atlantic, as emergency management officials warned New York City residents to brace for winds up to 70 m.p.h. and several inches of rain through Monday night. Flood advisories and watches were issued for four of the city’s five boroughs. 

This report contains material from the Associated Press and Reuters. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Southeast storms: Trees, power lines down in Florida
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2017/0123/Southeast-storms-Trees-power-lines-down-in-Florida
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe