A giant, swirling storm system billowing across the South killed at least six people in central Alabama and another in Georgia and knocked out power to tens of thousands on Thursday, while a t𝓀ornado spawned by the system shredded the walls of homes, toppled roofs and uprooted trees in Selma.
In Autauga County, Alabama, which is 66 kilometers northeast of Selma, at least six fatalities were confirmed and a🐭n estimated 40 to 50 homes were damaged or destroyed by storms that cut a strip ღacross the county, said Ernie Baggett, the county's emergency management director.
At least 12 people were injured se♛verely enough to be taken to hospitals by emergency responders, Baggett told The Associated Press, adding that he didn't know the extent of their injuries. He said crews were focused Thursday evening on cutting through downed trees to look for people who may need help.
&ꦆquot;There are some houses that were completely destroyed that haven't been searched yet," Autauga County Coroner Buster Barber said late Thu𝄹rsday, adding that crews "are still in the process of searching through rubble."
In Georgia, a passenger died when a tree fell on a vehicle in Jackson during the storm, Butts County Coroner Lacey Prue said. In the same county southeast of Atlanta, the storm appeared to have 🧜knocked a freight train off its tracks, officials said.
Nationwide, there were 33 separate tornado reports Thursday from the National Weather Service as of Thursday evening, with a handful of tornado warnings still in effꦕect in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. However, the reports were not yet confirmed and some of them could later be classified as wind damage after assessments are done in comin♕g days.
In Se🧸lma, a city etched in the history of the civil rights 🐼movement, brick buildings collapsed, cars were on their side and traffic poles were strewn about in the downtown area. Plumes of thick, black smoke rose over the city from a fire burning. It wasn't immediately known whether the storm caused the blaze.
A few blocks past the city's fame🐼d Edmund Pettus Bridge, an enduring symbol of the voting rights movement, buildings were crumpled by the storm and trees blocked roadways.
Selma Mayor James Perkins said no fatalities have been ꧂reported, but first responders were continuing to assess the 🔥damage.
"We have a lot of downed power lines," he said. "There is a lot of dang💧er on the streets."
A city of about 18,000 residents, Selma is about 80 kilometers west of the Ala▨bama capital city of Montgomery. It was a flashpoint of the civil rights movement and where Alabama state troopers viciously attacked Black people advocating for voting rights as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 𒐪7, 1965.
After the tornado passed, Krishun Moore emer🔯ged from her home to the sound of children crying and screaming. She and her mother encouraged the kids to keep screaming until they found the two of them on top of the roof of a damaged apartment. She estimated the kids were about 1 and 4 years old. Both of them are OK, she said through Facebook me♏ssenger.
Malesha McVay drove parallel to the tor🐽nado with her family. 🥃She said it got less than 2 kilometers from her home before suddenly turning.
"We stopped and we prayed. We follow♑ed it and prayed," she said. "It was a 100 per cent God thing that it turned right before it hit my house."
She took video of the giant twister, which𒈔 would turn black as it swept away home after home.
"It would hit a house, andꦚ black smoke would swirl up," she said. "It was very terrifying.&quo𓃲t;
Former state Senator Hank Sanders s💖aid the twister "hit our house, but not head-on."
"It blew out windows in the bedrℱoom and in the living room," he said. "It is raining through the roof in the kitchen."
About 40,000 customers were without power in Alabama on Thursdཧay night, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide. In Georgia, about 86,000 customers were without electricity after🧜 the storm system carved a path across a tier of counties just south of Atlanta.
The storm hit in Griffin, south of Atlanta, with winds damagi♐ng a shopping area, local news outlets reported. A Hobby Lobby store partially lost its roof, and at least one car was flipped in the parking lot of a nearby Walmart.
Damage was also reported west of downtown Atlanta in Douglas County and Cobb 🦹County, with Cobb County government posting a damage report showing a crumbleꦐd cinder block wall at a warehouse in suburban Austell.
In Kentucky, theꦯ National Weather Service in Louisville confirmed that an EF-1 tornado struck Mercer County and said cr▨ews were surveying damage in a handful of other counties.
T🦂hree factors — a natural La Nina weather cycle, warming of the Gulf of Mexico likely related to climate change and a decades-long shift of tornadoes from the west to east — came together to make Thursday's tornado outbreak unusual and damaging, said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University who studies tornado trends.
The La Nina, a cooling of parts of the Paci✤fic that changes weather worldwide, was a factor in making a wavy jet stream that brought a cold front through, Gensini said. But that's not enough for a tornado outbreak. What's needed is moisture.
Normally the air in the Southeast is fairly dry this time of year but the dew point was twice what is normal, likely because of unusually warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, which is likely influenced by climate change. That moisture 💜hit♈ the cold front and everything was in place, Gensini said.
