Weather officials: 24 tornadoes hit South over 2 days
Published 12:00 pm Wednesday, December 18, 2019
- Jason and Ilene Ford of Liberty, Mississippi, try to salvage some tools that had been in storage building behind their home after a tornado on Monday hit in Amite County, in Liberty, Mississippi, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019. The building was taken off its slab and ended up on the other side of the yard.
BIRMINGHAM (AP) — At least two dozen tornadoes hit the Southeast this week in a deadly outbreak of severe weather, assessments by the National Weather Service show.
Survey teams from regional weather service offices found evidence that twisters struck from western Louisiana to southern Georgia on Monday and Tuesday, with 10 tornadoes in Mississippi alone, according to reports issued online. Another nine touched down in Alabama, survey teams found.
Louisiana was hit by three twisters, and two struck Georgia.
The strongest storm was an EF-3 tornado with winds of as much as 160 mph. It left a path 62 miles long and as wide as 400 yards in Louisiana between the cities of DeRidder and Alexandria.
Storm surveys were continuing Wednesday, the weather service said.
A husband and wife died when a tornado struck their home in north Alabama, and a woman was killed in a twister in Louisiana. Another person died in flash flooding in Kentucky.
