TALAHASSEE, Fla. — Powerful storms left thousands of people without electricity Friday in Florida and other southeastern states, where damaging winds toppled trees on homes and power lines after days of deadly severe weather that spawned tornadoes in Michigan, Tennessee and other states.
The National Weather Service said wind gusts of 71 mph (114 kph), just below hurricane force, were recorded in Tallahassee, where images posted on social media showed mangled metal and other debris from damaged buildings scattered in parts of the capital of Florida. The storm knocked out two chimneys from apartment buildings in a Florida complex where fallen trees covered a row of cars.
Other damage included bent and twisted fencing at Florida State University’s baseball stadium, where classes were canceled Friday.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday on the social media platform
A statement from the city of Tallahassee attributed the widespread damage in the city of 200,000 people to “possible tornadic activity.” There were no immediate reports of injuries. The city said more than 66,000 customers were without electricity and 11 substations sustained damage.
“The restoration may last all weekend,” the announcement said.
Strong thunderstorms were also expected in Alabama, near the Florida Panhandle, where gusty winds could topple tree branches, the weather service said.
Nearly 280,000 homes and businesses from Mississippi to North Carolina were blacked out late Friday morning, according to the tracking website poweroutage.us. Most of these outages occurred in Florida, where more than 180,000 customers lost their lights and air conditioning.
In Mississippi’s capital Jackson, authorities on Friday asked residents to conserve water and cook as a precaution after a power outage at one of the major water treatment plants. JXN Water, the local water utility, said customers could expect lower water pressure as workers assessed damage from overnight storms.
“It will take many hours for the system to recover and in some places it may take longer,” Ted Henifin, the water system manager, said in a statement.
The National Weather Service issued several tornado warnings and warnings Friday morning, but they were lifted by the afternoon as the threat shifted to damaging high winds.
Other parts of the South were busy cleaning up storm damage caused earlier in the week. In the rural farming community of Vidalia, Georgia, and surrounding Toombs County, officials said a tornado left a path of destruction about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) long Thursday afternoon.
About 10 homes had trees fall on or through their roofs and crews worked through the night to remove about 50 fallen trees blocking roads, said Toombs County Emergency Management Director Lynn Moore. The wind tore off part of the roof of a Vidalia business and threw it across a road, where the debris crashed into a brick wall and fell on an unoccupied SUV, Moore said.
About a dozen car wrecks were reported when the storm passed, Moore said, but no one in the county was injured.
“We’re fortunate it wasn’t stronger than it was,” Moore said.
Also Thursday, the weather service reported a hurricane-force wind gust of 76 miles per hour (122 km per hour) in Autauga County, Alabama. And one person was injured in Rankin County, Mississippi, after a tree fell on a house, according to weather service damage reports.
Since Monday, 39 states have been threatened by severe weather and at least four people have been killed. About 220 million people were at risk of severe weather events on Wednesday and Thursday, said Matthew Elliott, a forecaster at the Storm Prediction Center.
The weather follows a stormy April in which the U.S. had 300 confirmed tornadoes, the second-highest number on record for the month and the highest since 2011. Both the Plains and the Midwest have been ravaged by tornadoes this spring.
A storm was blamed for killing a 22-year-old man in a car in Claiborne County, north of Knoxville, officials said. A second person was killed south of Nashville in Columbia, the Maury County seat, where officials said a tornado with 140 mph winds damaged or destroyed more than 100 homes.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said the woman who died in Maury County was in a mobile home that was thrown several feet into a wooded area. Lee visited emergency managers and officials from the Tennessee Department of Transportation in the storm-hit area on Thursday.
Heavy rain led to flash flooding and water rescues northeast of Nashville, and the weather service issued a tornado emergency, the highest alert level, for nearby areas.
A 10-year-old boy was seriously injured in Christiana, southeast of Nashville, when he became tangled in a storm drain and swept beneath the streets while playing with other children while adults cleared debris, said his father, the superintendent of Rutherford County Schools. Jimmy Sullivan, on social media.
The boy, Asher, fell into a drainage ditch and survived after receiving CPR, “but the damage is significant,” Sullivan posted on Facebook, asking for prayers.
“Asher needs a miracle,” Sullivan wrote.
Dozens of people gathered at school district offices Thursday for a prayer vigil. They bowed their heads and closed their eyes in prayer, singing “Amazing Grace” together.
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