Tornado watch: 1 dead in Tallahassee, Florida, as strong storms continue to wreak havoc across the south

Fierce storms with winds near hurricane force killed at least one woman in Florida on Friday, while a week of deadly weather continued in the South, with uprooted trees slamming into homes and knocking out power to thousands of people in several states.

Wind gusts of 71 miles per hour (114 km/h) were recorded in Tallahassee, just shy of hurricane strength, according to the National Weather Service. Images posted on social media showed shredded metal and other debris from damaged buildings littering parts of Florida’s capital.

The sheriff’s office for Leon County, which includes Tallahassee, said in a Facebook post Friday that a woman was killed when a tree fell on her family’s home.

The storm that hit Tallahassee early Friday also knocked down two chimneys from homes in a complex where fallen trees covered a number of cars. The fence remained hanging at Florida State University’s baseball stadium, where classes were canceled Friday.

The woman killed in Florida was at least the fourth death caused by severe weather in the Southeast this week. Two people were killed by storms in Tennessee on Wednesday, while another storm-related death was reported in North Carolina.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on the social media platform Friday

A statement from the city of Tallahassee blamed “possible tornadic activity” for the widespread damage in the city of 200,000. There were no immediate reports of injuries. According to the city, more than 66,000 customers were without power and 11 substations were damaged.

“The restoration may last until the weekend,” the announcement said.

Strong thunderstorms were also expected in Alabama near the Florida Panhandle, where gusty winds could knock down tree branches, the weather service said.

Nearly 280,000 homes and businesses from Mississippi to North Carolina were affected by power as of late Friday morning, according to the tracking website poweroutage.us. Most of those outages occurred in Florida, where more than 180,000 customers lost lights and air conditioning.

In Jackson, Mississippi’s capital, authorities on Friday urged residents to conserve and boil water as a precaution after a power outage at one of their major water treatment plants. JXN Water, the local water supplier, said customers could expect lower water pressure as workers assessed damage from overnight storms.

“It will take many hours for the system to recover, and in some locations it could take longer,” Ted Henifin, the water system manager, said in a statement.

The National Weather Service issued several tornado watches and warnings Friday morning, but they were lifted by midday as the threat shifted to damaging strong winds.

In other parts of the South, storm damage from earlier in the week has been repaired. In the rural farming community of Vidalia, Georgia, and surrounding Toombs County, officials said a tornado left a 2-mile-long path of destruction Thursday afternoon.

About 10 homes had trees fall on or through the roofs, and crews worked through the night to remove about 50 downed trees that were blocking roads, said Lynn Moore, emergency management director for Toombs County. Winds ripped off part of the roof of a Vidalia store and threw it across a street, where the debris struck a brick wall and fell onto an unoccupied SUV, Moore said.

A dozen car wrecks were reported over the course of the storm, Moore said, but no one in the county was injured.

“We’re lucky it wasn’t stronger than it was,” Moore said.

Also on Thursday, the weather service reported a hurricane-force wind gust of 76 miles per hour (122 km/h) in Autauga County, Alabama. And one person was injured in Rankin County, Mississippi, after a tree fell on a home, according to weather service damage reports.

As of Monday, 39 states have been threatened by severe weather and at least four people have died. About 220 million people were at risk of severe weather on Wednesday and Thursday, said Matthew Elliott, a meteorologist with the Storm Prediction Center.

The weather follows a stormy April that saw 300 confirmed tornadoes in the U.S., the second most on record this month and the most since 2011. Both the Plains and the Midwest have been hit by tornadoes this spring.

Officials in New Hope, North Carolina, said Wednesday that a man was found dead in his car after winds knocked a tree down on it.

In Tennessee, a storm was blamed for the death of a 22-year-old man in a car in Claiborne County, north of Knoxville, officials said. In Maury County, south of Nashville, a woman died when winds pushed a mobile home into a wooded area. County officials said a tornado with winds of 140 mph (225 km/h) damaged or destroyed more than 100 homes.

Heavy rains led to a flash flood emergency and water rescues northeast of Nashville, and the weather service declared a tornado emergency, the highest alert level, for surrounding areas.

A 10-year-old boy was seriously injured in Christiana, southeast of Nashville, when he fell into a storm drain and was swept under the road while playing with other children while adults cleaned up debris, like his father, the Rutherford County school superintendent , Jimmy Sullivan, posted on social media.

The boy, Asher, emerged from a drainage ditch and survived after cardiopulmonary resuscitation, “but the damage is significant,” Sullivan posted on Facebook, asking for prayers.

“Asher needs a miracle,” Sullivan wrote.

Dozens of people gathered for a prayer vigil at the school district’s offices Thursday. They bowed their heads, closed their eyes in prayer and sang “Amazing Grace” together.

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