A fast-moving storm packing a horror list of hazards — tornadoes, floods, severe storms and more — raged through the southern United States on Saturday, leaving at least seven dead and a trail of destruction in its wake.
The deaths, in Louisiana, Texas and Alabama, included an elderly couple in northwest Louisiana who were killed when a tornado tossed their trailer home hundreds of feet and damaged more than 50 homes.
The deadly tornado was just one of a series of dangerous weather events tangled up in the storm system. Powerful winds pummeled Georgia and Tennessee, officials warned of floods in Mississippi, and Alabama braced for tornadoes. Warnings of hail and snow followed closely behind, extending from Oklahoma up through the Midwest.
“This is one of the stronger systems that we’ve seen in recent years,” said Kurt Van Speybroeck, an emergency response specialist at the Southern Region Headquarters of the National Weather Service. He said on Saturday afternoon that the strongest part of the storm was passing over Alabama and Tennessee and that it was moving east at about 40 miles per hour. It would likely roll over the Carolinas on Sunday and be off the coast by Sunday afternoon at the latest, he said.
The Louisiana tornado, in Bossier Parish, was strong enough to flatten entire trailer homes, said Charlie Woodrum, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in Shreveport, La. The twister’s winds likely spun at up to 135 miles per hour, he said.
The elderly couple’s home, a double-wide trailer, was found about 200 feet away from its normal location, said Lt. Bill Davis, a spokesman for the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office. It had likely been picked up by the tornado and tossed into the couple’s backyard. Three dogs who had lived with the couple were missing.
“This thing happened at two in the morning,” Lieutenant Davis said. “It was just bad timing.”
Another man died in Oil City, about 20 miles west, at about 1 a.m. when a large tree fell on his home, collapsing the roof and warping much of the house, the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. The man’s wife was uninjured, the authorities said.
The storm also killed a person in Nacogdoches County, Texas, a local police dispatcher said. According to local news reports, the 44-year-old man was killed when a tree fell on his home early on Saturday.
Three more people died in Pickens County, Ala., about 30 miles west of Tuscaloosa, according to the National Weather Service office in Birmingham.
About 190,000 customers were without power across the south, according to PowerOutage.us, a website that tracks power failures.
A tornado may have also touched down in Mississippi, where several mobile homes were destroyed, said Thomas Winesett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Jackson, Miss. He cautioned that Weather Service employees would need to survey the area before confirming that the damage was from a tornado.
Severe thunderstorms and high winds were also rolling through the region, creating a web of warnings.
“It’s a little bit of everything,” Mr. Winesett said.
