Pike County authorities asked drivers to stay off roads until noon Friday. Parts of Georgia are under a flood watch. Three homes were destroyed.
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Incoming flights to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport were delayed for up to two hours because of the weather, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
FlightAware, a website that tracks airline flights, showed 550 flights had been canceled nationwide with 4,276 delays by midday. The victims include a 70-year-old man and 69-year-old woman in Perry County, and a 22-year-old man in Rhea County. If confirmed to be continuous, its 150-mile-long path could be the longest for a December tornado in the mid-south, NWS Memphis said. The center issued a “particularly unsafe situation” alert for the first time since June 2014, when two massive EF4 twisters devastated a rural Nebraska town, killing two people.
Three people were confirmed dead from the storms in MS, including a 7-year-old boy, two more in Tennessee and one in Arkansas, according to emergency management and law enforcement officials in the region.
There were reports of major damage to buildings in Sardis, about 45 miles east of Clarksdale, and in Holly Springs, more than 90 minutes to the northeast.
In Arkansas, an 18-year-old woman was reported killed and an 18-month-old child was taken to hospital after a tree was uprooted and tossed on a house.
In Benton County, where one death occurred, search-and-rescue crews were doing a house-by-house search to make sure residents were accounted for.
Storms packing strong winds and heavy rain slammed the USA mid-section on Wednesday, leaving officials anxious about Christmas yard decorations becoming lethal projectiles.
“Damage assessments will begin today, and we pray the death toll does not rise”, Brett Carr, a spokesman for the agency, said in a Thursday-morning email to The Post.
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency in the aftermath of the storms.
Dozens of people were injured, and many are missing.
Ten people are reported to have been killed tornadoes moved through northern Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas. The storms are likely a result of the unseasonably warm weather that the country has seen in recent weeks.
High temperature records are tumbling across upstate NY as the early winter warmup continues across the region. Highs in Atlanta and Charlotte on Christmas Eve were forecast to be in the mid-70s.
Here’s a list of what’s open and closed on Christmas Eve, which lies on Thursday, Dec. 24. There were an unknown number of injuries, Clarksdale Mayor Bill Luckett told the Associated Press, but he said the only reported casualty in his town was a dog killed by storm debris.
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Mulester Johnson says he and relatives were inside his house in Holly Springs, Mississippi, when the storm hit.
