An enormous storm system that dumped snow and sleet on the U.S. midsection and unleashed damaging tornadoes around the Deep South has been blamed for three deaths and several injuries, and has begun punching its way northeast, slowing holiday travel.
Post-Christmas travellers braced for a second day of flight delays and cancellations, a day after rare winter twisters damaged numerous homes in Louisiana and Alabama. The vast storm system stretching across numerous states has been linked to three deaths, though no one was killed outright in the tornadoes. The storms also left more than 100,000 without power for a time, darkening Christmas celebrations.
Drenching rainstorms rumbled across Georgia early Wednesday without causing any apparent damages. But Georgia Power officials said thousands lost power in the state as the storm system moved on toward the Carolinas, taking aim at the heavily populated Eastern seaboard.
Farther north on a line from Little Rock, Ark., to Cleveland, blizzard conditions were predicted before the snow made its way into the Northeast.
Thirty-four tornadoes were reported in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama during the outbreak Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.
CBC weatherman Craig Larkins says the same storm system in the U.S. that spawned the tornadoes is heading for southern Ontario.
"This intensifying winter storm centred over Tennessee this morning will track well south of the Lower Great Lakes today, bringing heavy snow, strong winds and reduced visibility to the regions," Larkins said early Wednesday morning.
"Travellers should give themselves extra time and exercise caution if driving later today, tonight and Thursday."
On Wednesday, about 200 flights were cancelled at Toronto's Pearson International Airport as the winter storm closed in on the U.S. East.
The majority of flights affected Wednesday were departing and arriving from Boston, Pittsburgh and New York City. Some domestic flights within Ontario and to the Maritimes were also rescheduled.
Rick Cauley's family was hosting relatives for Christmas when the tornado sirens went off in Mobile. Not taking any chances, he and his wife, Ashley, hustled everyone down the block to take shelter at the athletic field house at Mobile's Murphy High School in Mobile.
It turns out, that wasn't the place to head.
"As luck would have it, that's where the tornado hit," Cauley said. "The pressure dropped and the ears started popping and it got crazy for a second." They were all fine, though the school was damaged, as were a church and several homes, but officials say no one was seriously injured.
Camera footage captured the approach of the large, frightening funnel cloud.
Power outages, flight cancellations
Mobile was the biggest city hit by numerous by the rare winter twisters. Along with brutal, straight-line winds, the storms knocked down countless trees, blew the roofs off homes and left many Christmas celebrations in the dark. Torrential rains drenched the region and several places saw flash flooding.
More than 325 flights around, into and leaving the U.S. were cancelled as of Wednesday morning, according to the flight tracker FlightAware.com. The cancellations were mostly spread around airports that had been or soon would be in the path of the storm.
Holiday travellers in the much colder midsection battled treacherous driving conditions from freezing rain and blizzard conditions from the same fast-moving storms. In Arkansas, highway department officials said the state was fortunate the snowstorm hit on Christmas Day when many travelers were already at their destinations.
Texas, meanwhile, dealt with high winds and slickened highways.
A city waste management truck drives on Broadway in Paducah, Ky., while collecting trash downtown during a winter storm Wednesday. (Stephen Lance Dennee/Associated Press)
On Tuesday, winds toppled a tree onto a pickup truck in the Houston area, killing the driver, and a 53-year-old north Louisiana man was killed when a tree fell on his house. Icy roads already were blamed for a 21-vehicle pileup in Oklahoma, and the Highway Patrol there says a 28-year-old woman was killed in a crash on a snowy U.S. Highway near Fairview.
Trees fell on homes and across roadways in several communities in southern Mississippi and Louisiana. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency in the state, saying eight counties reported damages and some injuries.
It included McNeill, where a likely tornado damaged a dozen homes and sent eight people to the hospital, none with life-threatening injuries, said Pearl River County emergency management agency director Danny Manley.
The snowstorm that caused numerous accidents pushed out of Oklahoma late Tuesday, carrying with it blizzard warnings for parts of northeast Arkansas, where 25 centimetres of snow was forecast. Freezing rain clung to trees and utility lines in Arkansas and winds gusts up to 50 km/h whipped them around, causing about 71,000 customers to lose electricity for a time.
Christmas lights also were knocked out with more than 100,000 customers without power for at least a time in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.
Blizzard conditions were possible for parts of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky up to Cleveland. By the end of the week, that snow was expected to move into the Northeast.
Twisters rare but not unheard of
Jason Gerth said the Mobile tornado passed by in a few moments and from his porch, he saw about a half-dozen green flashes in the distance as transformers blew. His home was spared.
"It missed us by 100 feet [30.5 metres] and we have no damage," Gerth said.
In Louisiana, quarter-sized hail was reported early Tuesday in the western part of the state and a WDSU viewer sent a photo to the TV station of what appeared to be a waterspout around the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in New Orleans. There were no reports of crashes or damage.
The holiday may conjure visions of snow and ice, but twisters this time of year are not unheard of. Ten storm systems in the last 50 years have spawned at least one Christmastime tornado with winds of 182 km/h or more in the South, said Chris Vaccaro, a National Weather Service spokesman in Washington, via email.
The most lethal were the storms of Dec. 24-26, 1982, when 29 tornadoes in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi killed three people and injured 32.
In Mobile, a large section of the roof on the Trinity Episcopal Church is missing and the front wall of the parish wall is gone, said Scott Rye, a senior warden at the church in the Midtown section of the city.
On Christmas Eve, the church with about 500 members was crowded for services.
"Thank God this didn't happen last night," Rye said.
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