Weather radar Friday evening showed an intense system along the Interstate 20/59 corridor west of Birmingham, with the storm moving eastward.
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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in some parts of the country, but in others it feels more like a typical spring day. Green Christmas wins out this year with record-breaking temperatures making for a holiday that could get Heat Miser singing.
The National Weather Service warned residents to avoid areas where flooding was expected, also noting that more than a dozen tornadoes struck at least six southern states during the last several days.
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The funnel was spotted by witnesses outside the state’s biggest city, Birmingham, at about 5pm Central time, (2300 GMT) on Friday, and whipped through some of its neighborhoods.
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The National Weather Service says search and rescue efforts are ongoing in Birmingham, Alabama, where a tornado moved through in the past hour. A twister in Birmingham, Alabama, late on Friday afternoon damaged several homes, uprooted trees and caused a handful of minor injuries, police and weather officials reported.
“I heard debris hitting the house, and I said, ‘we better get in the bathtub,”‘ said Baldwin, 72, a retired machine operator.
“It’s something I would not want to go through again”, Baldwin said, staring at the remains of his home.
Green said she was unsure of whether any neighbors had been injured or killed down the block where several homes were destroyed. “I’m hoping that everybody got out all right”.
“There does appear to be some significant damage”, National Weather Service meteorologist Jody Aaron reported, adding that details were pretty sketchy.
One person died in Arkansas, and dozens of homes were damaged or destroyed.
“It makes you thankful to be alive with your family”, he said.
Another person was killed in Arkansas.
On Friday, parts of MS remained under a flood warning. Flooding was a far wider problem across the state, with roads washed out and homes damaged from the Gulf Coast to north Alabama, the MS line to east Alabama.
Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant and Georgia Governor Nathan Deal also declared states of emergency in counties affected by the weather. At least 14 people were confirmed dead – seven of them in MS, including a 7-year-old boy who perished while riding in a auto that was swept up and tossed by storm winds. The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said the victims were a 19-year-old female and two 22-year-old males.
Six people died in Tennessee.
Meanwhile, in the tiny town of Elba in southern Alabama, volunteers distributed sandbags around the Pea River, projected to crest Saturday at 43 feet – a foot below the levees surrounding it.
Two deaths attributable to weather were reported Saturday in MS: two people who have been missing since Wednesday, bringing that state’s death toll to 10.
Two people are missing in the floodwaters, he said. “They really don’t know how to drive in this kind of stuff”.
One year ago a tornado hit south-eastern MS, killing five people and injuring dozens more.
Barbara Perkins and her husband hunkered in a closet of their home in Falkner, Mississippi, when powerful winds peeled the roof off and sucked up a heavy air conditioning unit.
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Despite being newly homeless, Perkins said the tragedy helped her “stop and realize what Christmas is all about”.
