WASHINGTON (AFP) – Severe weather battered the United States (US) on Tuesday, spinning off tornadoes and reportedly killing three people in the South as high winds and blizzards buffeted the North and hundreds of thousands lost power.
Heavy rain leading to flash flooding, wind gusts likely more than 80 kilometres per hour, and thunderstorms struck the Eastern Seaboard from the Mid-Atlantic to the Northeast, according to the National Weather Service.
“Do not underestimate this one,” warned New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy in an interview with media.
He described the storm as ‘unusual’, citing up to four inches of rain in January and high winds pummeling the shoreline.
The inclement weather even resulted in Vice President Kamala Harris’s plane, Air Force 2, being diverted from landing at its normal spot, Joint Base Andrews, and instead heading to Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
Meanwhile, tornadoes ripped through the Southeast, including the Florida panhandle, where drone images showed downed trees and damaged buildings with roofs torn off.
At least three storm-related deaths occurred across a large, multi-state section of the South.
One person was killed in a North Carolina mobile home park where multiple homes were damaged, according to Catawba county government officials.
Another died when a tree fell across the windshield of a vehicle in Jonesboro, Georgia just south of Atlanta, the Clayton County Police Department said.
An 81-year-old woman was also killed in Alabama when a tornado struck her mobile home and sent it rolling multiple times, local media said, citing the Houston County coroner.
More than 890,000 customers had lost power in the US as of yesterday evening, mainly in the East, according to monitoring website Poweroutage.us.
In the central part of the country heavy snowfall (at a rate of one to two inches per hour) hit the upper Midwest and was shifting into the Great Lakes region, the weather service said.
