Tropical Storm Sally downed trees, flooded streets and homes, and knocked out power, reportedly killing one person, as the former hurricane on Wednesday pounded the US southeast with torrential rain.
Sally made landfall overnight near Gulf Shores, Alabama, along the border with Florida as a Category 2 hurricane.
Slow-moving Sally, which was subsequently downgraded to a tropical storm, then lingered over parts of southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, where it caused severe flooding with copious amounts of rain, the US National Hurricane Center said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Catastrophic and life-threatening flooding continues over portions of the Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama,” the center said.
The news site AL.com reported one fatality in the coastal town of Orange Beach, Alabama, but Mayor Tony Kennon said he had no further details.
Some of the worst reported flooding occurred about 50km east in Pensacola, Florida, which has a population of about 52,000.
Downtown streets resembled lakes with cars submerged to the tops of their wheels and wind gusts whipping up whitecaps on the water.
“Flooded roadways and intersections, along with hazardous debris in roadways [locations] have become too numerous to list,” the Pensacola police wrote on Twitter. “Please stay off roadways now.”
Northwest Florida residents were expecting rain and wind, but were largely caught off guard when Sally veered sharply east and came in for a direct hit.
People were left with no time to gather food or water, let alone cover windows or place sandbags in front of doors.
Pensacola resident Jeff Gardner said his family was “surprised that we found ourselves inside the hurricane.”
“You just sit there wondering if, you know, your house is about to start to be ripped apart” the 47-year-old said.
Although his home was not destroyed, he said that there “was just a constant rush of wind the whole night.”
The new Three Mile Bridge over Pensacola Bay was massively damaged with a section missing, and had to be closed.
At 8pm, Sally had maximum sustained winds of 75km per hour, the center said.
It also warned that “a few tornadoes” could occur in parts of northern Florida and southern Georgia, as Sally crawled toward the northeast.
The storm was expected to weaken as it moved further inland and become a tropical depression overnight on Wednesday to yesterday.
More than 515,000 homes and businesses in Alabama and Florida have lost power, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us.
David Triana, 57, of Navarre, Florida, near Pensacola, said that he and his neighbors did not board up their homes because they did not expect the trajectory of the storm to shift so much to the east or for it to be so strong.
“Nobody was prepared for a Cat 2,” said Triana, whose home escaped without any damage. “The forecasts for the cone and the strength of the storm did not indicate that it would hit us so hard.”
Sally hit Gulf Shores, about 56km west of Pensacola, with winds of about 169km per hour, the center said.
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