Flooding rain, thunderstorms and possibly more tornadoes continue to threaten the US South Monday after a deadly outbreak of storms in Mississippi over the weekend.
A slight chance of severe thunderstorms is possible Monday across Alabama, northern Florida and Georgia, the US Storm Prediction Center said. Meanwhile, a second system is set to strike California with flooding rains Tuesday, then sweep across the US and raise the risk of thunderstorms and tornadoes in Texas and Oklahoma on Thursday night and in Arkansas and parts of the Midwest on Friday.
“That is going to be the big severe weather day,” said Carl Erickson, a meteorologist with commercial forecaster AccuWeather Inc.
On Friday, at least 25 people died in Mississippi when tornadoes ripped across the state, according to the state’s Emergency Management Agency. In Mississippi and Georgia, 31,300 customers were without power Monday at 1 p.m. local time, according to Poweroutage.us. President Joe Biden declared a major disaster for the area allowing federal funding to flow.
At this time of year warm air from the south clashes with lingering colder air in the north to fuel ferocious storms. Mississippi’s outbreak was made worse because the warm water off the Gulf of Mexico helped fuel the danger, Erickson said.
From 2020 to 2022, tornadoes killed at least 202 people with 1,212 occurring, on average, each year. Since 1980, severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and hail have killed 1,982 people and caused nearly $384 billion in damages and losses, according to the US National Centers for Environmental Information.
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