At least NINE killed by 30 tornadoes up to 165 mph torn through Alabama, Georgia and Kentucky
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The death toll from a series of devastating tornadoes that tore through Alabama, Georgia and Kentucky Thursday night rose to nine, and authorities warned it could still rise.
Unseasonal storms tore through several counties, creating 20-mile-wide roads in some cases.
At least 30 tornadoes were counted, with some reaching 165 mph.
Seven people died in Alabama and two in Georgia: a government official assessing damage and another a five-year-old boy who was struck by a falling tree in a car. The adult he was with in Butts County near Jackson Lake suffered serious injuries and was taken to the hospital.
Trees are uprooted and homes destroyed in Selma, Alabama, Friday after a tornado ripped through the town Thursday night.
Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, said Friday morning that his state had endured a “tragic night.”
“Unfortunately, the storm moved across our state, it’s been a tragic night and morning in our state,” he said.
It is a very dangerous environment.
The storm hit Griffin, south of Atlanta, and the winds damaged a commercial area, local media reported. A Hobby Lobby store partially lost its roof and at least one car flipped over in the parking lot of a nearby Walmart.
Damage was also reported west of downtown Atlanta in Douglas County and Cobb County, with the Cobb County government releasing a damage report showing a collapsed cinder block wall at a warehouse in suburban Austell. .
In Kentucky, videos and photos shared on social media showed strong winds as the tornadoes approached.
The National Weather Service in Louisville confirmed an EF-1 tornado hit Mercer County and said crews were surveying for damage in a handful of other counties.
The worst hit was Alabama, with Autauga County, between Selma and Montgomery, counting the cost on Friday.
A giant tree fell outside the Henderson House after a tornado outbreak in Selma, Alabama, on Friday. During the Civil War that followed the Battle of Selma, the property, built in 1855, was occupied by Wilson’s Raiders and used as a hospital for Union soldiers.
Debris and fallen trees litter the grounds outside Sturdivant Hall in Selma, Alabama
People work to board up the roof and windows of a damaged home in Selma on Friday.
Some 40 homes were destroyed in Selma by the tornadoes, which devastated swathes of the region between Montgomery and Selma.
People burn debris from their homes as they clean up after the tornado in Old Kingston, Pratville, Alabama
A man with a chainsaw tries to clear debris from a house in Selma on Friday, after the devastating series of storms.
Social media accounts from the National Weather Service warned Alabama residents to take shelter immediately amid the “life-threatening situation.”
Forty homes were destroyed, said Ernie Baggett, director of the Autauga County Emergency Management Agency.
He said the damage was unprecedented.
“It’s complete devastation,” he said.
“There are a few, a couple of our county roads that only have one or two houses left that may be habitable.”
In Selma, a city of about 18,000 people, a tornado tore a wide path through downtown, where brick buildings collapsed, oak trees were uprooted, cars were knocked over and power lines were left dangling. .
Plumes of thick black smoke billowed over the city from a blazing fire.
James Spann, a meteorologist and host of Weather Brains, shared video of the tornado roaring toward the city, as people outside a Walmart stood and stared in shock.
James Perkins, the mayor of Selma, said no deaths have been reported, but several people were seriously injured.
Rescuers were continuing to assess the damage and officials hoped to get an aerial view of the city on Friday morning.
“We have a lot of downed power lines,” he said. There is a lot of danger in the streets.
Traffic lights and power lines lie on the road after a tornado outbreak in Selma
A factory roof is cut off and debris is scattered in Selma Friday, following tornadoes on Thursday.
At a Selma tax office, Deborah Brown said she and her colleagues had to run for cover when they saw a tornado hurtling down the street.
“We could have walked away, all of us,” Brown said in a Facebook video.
We had to run for cover. We had to go run and jump in the closet.
A car overturned by winds is seen in Pratville, Alabama, on Friday after the previous night’s storms.
Locals inspect the remains of residences that have been reduced to piles of rubble in Pratville
The top half of a home is seen completely exposed in Selma as people survey the damage Friday.
Kay Ivey, the governor of Alabama, visited on Friday and said she was shocked by the scale of the devastation.
She said that “it was so much worse than anything I could have imagined.”
She added: “The roofs are just gone, the trees look like toothpicks.”
At least 33,400 homes and businesses in Alabama and Georgia were without power as of Friday afternoon.
What is a tornado?
A tornado is a narrow, rapidly rotating column of air around an intense center of low pressure that reaches the ground from cumulonimbus clouds, also known as thunderclouds, according to the Weather Bureau.
Tornadoes have a narrow width, usually up to 100 meters (328 ft), but the damage can be concentrated and severe.
As they develop, the funnel clouds spread out from the cloud base and when they reach the ground, a tornado forms.
A tornado is a narrow, rapidly rotating column of air around an intense center of low pressure that reaches the ground from cumulonimbus clouds, also known as thunderclouds, according to the Weather Bureau. In the image, a tornado over a field.
Tornadoes can have wind speeds of up to 300 miles per hour (483 kilometers per hour) and when they touch the ground they can destroy trees and buildings in their path, launching heavy objects such as cars through the air like a Frisbee.
Tornadoes that occur over water are called waterspouts, and those that do not touch the ground are called funnel clouds.
The highest surface wind speed ever recorded of 486 kilometers per hour (302 miles per hour) is the result of the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak.
The longest distance traveled by a single tornado was 219 miles (352 kilometers) from Ellington, Missouri to Princeton, Indiana, on March 18, 1925.
The most tornadoes in a single year were recorded in 2004. There were 1,820.