Skip to footer

Tornadoes rip through Deep South. And this storm system isn't over.

The severe weather systems are affecting peoples throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, and have already left at least three dead.

|
Michael DeMocker/NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune/AP
People search a destroyed trailer at a business near the intersection of Routes 70 and 1 Tuesday, in Paincourtville, La. A suspected tornado ripped through a Louisiana recreational vehicle park Tuesday, leaving a mangled mess of smashed trailers and killing at least one person, officials said. In neighboring Mississippi, authorities said one person died when a possible tornado hit a mobile home.

Strong storms tore through the Gulf Coast states on Tuesday, with several tornadoes in Mississippi and Louisiana killing at least three people, injuring dozens, and destroying scores of buildings.

The violent weather system, which also hit Alabama and Florida and is expected to reach Georgia and the Carolinas later Wednesday, was one of the strongest the region has seen in years. In Sugar Hill, a trailer park in the southern Louisiana community of Convent, two people have been confirmed to have died with an additional two or three missing and dozens more taken to a local hospital. Around 140 of the 160 mobile homes in the park were destroyed by the storms.

“This is some of the worst damage that I've seen in my 36 years with the state police,” Louisiana State Police superintendent Colonel Michael Edmonson told Reuters.

The sheriff of St. James Parish, where the mobile home park is located, said that despite the severity of the weather, authorities were continuing to search the park for survivors.

“We never had anything like this; we never had this many people injured in one event, and so much destruction in one event,” Sheriff Willy Martin told WVUE news, according to the Associated Press. “We won't stop searching until we're satisfied we've searched every pile.”

The governors of Louisiana and Mississippi declared a state of emergency in the areas like St. James that experienced the heaviest weather, and thousands of residents throughout the area lost power. Government offices and schools in those two states were closed early, and schools in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida cancelled their Wednesday classes.

The National Weather Service said that a tornado had hit a New Orleans airport and another was reported in Pensacola, Fla., accompanied by high winds and property damage.

Following the Tuesday storms, flash flood watches and wind advisories were issued throughout Georgia and Alabama where 1 to 2 inches of rain were predicted there. The Carolinas could also be at risk of flooding, and the storms there are expected to bring wind, hail, and tornadoes.

The National Weather Service reports:

Strong to severe thunderstorms capable of damaging winds and tornadoes are forecast from the Mid-Atlantic states southward through the Carolinas and into Florida today. The highest threat for severe weather will be from central North Carolina northeastward into far southeast Virginia.

Preparedness actions...Review your severe weather safety procedures for the possibility of dangerous weather today. Stay tuned to NOAA Weather Radio, weather.gov, or other media for watches and warnings. A tornado watch means that conditions are favorable for tornadoes to form during the next several hours. If a tornado warning is issued for your area, move to a place of safety, ideally in a basement or interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building.

Material from the Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report.

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.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Tornadoes rip through Deep South. And this storm system isn't over.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2016/0224/Tornadoes-rip-through-Deep-South.-And-this-storm-system-isn-t-over
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe