NEW CANEY, Texas — (AP) — Cleanup was underway Monday after a strong storm system spawned hail, rain, high winds and tornadoes across the southern U.S. over the weekend, killing at least four people.
As of Monday afternoon, over 30 tornadoes had been confirmed as crews worked through about 50 reports of tornado damage spanning from Texas to South Carolina, said Mark Wiley, an emergency response specialist with the National Weather Service’s Southern Region Headquarters.
The storms came over a busy holiday travel weekend, causing some treacherous road conditions along with delays or cancellations at some of the busiest U.S. airports.
The storms first hit Saturday around the Houston area, where the National Weather Service by Monday had confirmed six tornadoes. Two of the twisters were rated EF3, with peak winds of about 140 mph (225 kpm), including one that hit Montgomery County in the Porter and New Caney areas.
“Some of the damage was pretty substantial, some cases leveling homes, some producing quite a bit of roof damage,” said Brian Kyle, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in Houston.
About 50 homes in Montgomery County sustained major damage and 30 were destroyed, county official Jason Smith said. A couple hundred more homes sustained minor or cosmetic damage, he said.
Cleanup crews labored over the weekend and were continuing to pick up debris Monday.
Carlos Benitez, 41, was already working to rebuild his auto repair shop in the New Caney area. He said he closed his eyes as the storm blew through and when he opened them, “everything’s down.”
Sasha Zamora, 39, lives nearby, and was trying to put her baby to sleep when she realized how serious the storm was. “Immediately, the wind picked up so fast that things were hitting the window,” she said, recounting how she rushed her children to the center of the house. Though her family and her property came through the storm OK, her neighbor’s mobile home flipped over, Zamora said.
Officials in Mississippi said two people were killed in storms there, including an 18-year-old who died after a tree fell on her home Saturday night in Natchez in Adams County. About 22,000 Mississippians remained without power Monday afternoon, according to the website PowerOutage.us. In Texas, a 48-year-old woman died in the Liverpool area south of Houston, said Madison Polston of the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office. She said the woman was found about 100 feet (30 meters) from her home.
Dozens of homes and buildings were significantly damaged in Brazoria County, including an elementary school.
In North Carolina, a 70-year-old man was killed Sunday in Statesville, just north of Charlotte, when a tree landed on the pickup truck he was driving. Highway Patrol Trooper DJ Maffucci said “it was just a freak accident” and he believed Matthew Teeple, of Cleveland, North Carolina, was killed instantly.
Maffucci said that the storms were responsible for a number of downed trees and “quite a few wrecks."
In the Alabama city of Athens, northwest of Huntsville, storm damaged the downtown area, said city spokeswoman Holly Hollman. Large HVAC units were hurled from the tops of building and the roof was ripped off a bookstore. A full-sized, stripped-down military helicopter was toppled from a pole where it was on display, she added.
“I stepped out on my porch and I could hear it roar,” she said of the storm.
Although somewhat uncommon for the season, weather officials say even December can bring severe weather under the right circumstances, as warm temperatures from the Gulf of Mexico combine with a cold front.
“You can still have the right ingredients that lead to these severe events even in the dead of winter in the Deep South,” said Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist with the National Weather Services’ Weather Prediction Center.
Still, it's rare for a system to start in Texas and make its way all the way to the Atlantic Coast this time of year, Wiley said.
Meanwhile, in western Pennsylvania, high winds overnight Sunday caused power outages early Monday, most of them in Pittsburgh and other parts of Allegheny County. Wind speeds of more than 60 miles per hour (97 kph) were reported in Pennsylvania as high winds also blew across Ohio and northern West Virginia.
AccuWeather meteorologist Alex DaSilva in State College, Pennsylvania, said a strengthening low-pressure system ushered in the winds that downed trees and utility poles Sunday evening and into the night. Some 60,000 Pennsylvania utility customers were without power Monday morning. That number had dropped to about 13,000 by Monday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us.
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Stengle contributed from Dallas. Associated Press reporters Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg and Julie Walker in New York also contributed to this report.
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