People in New Orleans and its suburbs were sloshing through flooded streets as forecasters warned of even more rain Wednesday after high winds ripped through the South, collapsing the roof of an apartment building in Slidell, Louisiana.
In Slidell, just outside New Orleans, police shared video of what they believe was a tornado that hit Wednesday morning. Outside a McDonald’s restaurant, a car was on its side, power poles were leaning toward the ground and large pieces of the McDonald’s Golden Arches sign were strewn about the street, the video shows.
In a Texas town, emergency workers rescued people from flooded homes and cars. Residents in Mississippi were warned to flee over fears a levee would fail. And Louisiana schools and government offices closed Wednesday.
Heavy rain, tornadoes, hail and damaging wind gusts were all possible across the Gulf Coast and the Deep South on Wednesday, according to meteorologist Ashton Robinson Cook with the NWS Weather Prediction Center.
In Texas, several people were rescued from homes and vehicles early Wednesday morning when flooding inundated parts of Jasper County, near the Louisiana line, authorities said.
“The City of Kirbyville remains under water and is still the major concern at this time,” the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office said on social media.
All major roads into Kirbyville, a town of about 2,000 people, were shut down early Wednesday due to the flooding, the sheriff’s office said. Shelters were being set up after about 50 people were displaced from their homes, Billy Ted Smith, the Jasper County emergency management coordinator said. He estimated those people came from about 20 flooded homes and said there had been around half a dozen people rescued from vehicles. He said that so far, no major injuries have been reported.
In the Houston suburb of Katy, strong thunderstorms that passed through the area around 2 a.m. Wednesday collapsed part of the roof of a Firestone repair shop. Storms also damaged businesses and cars in a nearby strip mall, including sending a large air conditioning unit that had been on the roof crashing to the parking lot, officials said.
No one was inside the repair shop, but at a nearby sports bar, employees were in the back cleaning up and restocking after the business had closed for the night when the thunderstorms rolled through, Harris County Fire Marshal Laurie Christensen told reporters later Wednesday morning.
“We were blessed that no lives were lost,” Christensen said, adding that only minor injuries were reported.
Photos posted on social media showed heavy damage to a church in Port Arthur, Texas, where city officials said they were also dealing with downed trees and powerlines.
As the workday began Wednesday morning in Louisiana, more than 100,000 customers were already without power, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide. Another 30,000 customers were without power in Mississippi.
In Mississippi, the sheriff sent out an urgent warning Wednesday to people in parts of Yazoo County, just northwest of Jackson.
“If you or someone that you know lives in the Eastbrook subdivision on Highway 16 in Yazoo County you need to evacuate IMMEDIATELY!!!,” the Yazoo County Sheriff’s Office posted on social media. “The levee is about to break on the lake and the houses will flood. Please get out ASAP!!!”
It was not immediately known how many residents were affected by the evacuation order, but the sheriff’s office said in an update that only people in the Eastbrook subdivision were affected by the levee situation.
A vigorous storm system that developed across the southern Rockies and moisture moving across the Gulf of Mexico combined to produce a series of thunderstorms from Texas’ south plains and panhandle eastward across Louisiana and Mississippi, Robinson Cook said.
There was hail in central Texas on Tuesday and radar estimates of up to a foot of rainfall over the past 24 hours, with heavier totals just northwest of Lake Charles, Louisiana, Robinson Cook said.
