Tornado Hits Birmingham as Severe Southern Weather Continues

Birmingham firefighters work a scene after a tornado touched down in Jefferson County, Ala., damaging several houses, Friday, Dec. 25, 2015, in Birmingham, Ala. Sewell said the visit was an opportunity to get a more complete picture of the damage, to determine whether it meets the threshold for seeking federal disaster assistance.

“I think everyone understands now the gravity of what happened”, Anita Foster, spokeswoman for American Red Cross of North Texas, said on WFAA television.

In Birmingham, Alabama homes and businesses were destroyed by a tornado that tore through the city on Christmas Day, while some of the state has seen record-breaking rains since Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.

The National Weather Service says flash flooding is “possible today from the Southern Plains, the middle Mississippi Valley and into the Lower Great Lakes region – remaining over the Southern Plains and middle Mississippi Valley for Sunday”. ‘Details are still sketchy, ‘ said Jason Holmes, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said.

Three structures were destroyed and a fourth one was damaged as a result of the storm that hit the southwestern part of the city around 5:00 p.m. CST Friday over about a 1 square-mile radius.

A tornado struck Birmingham, Alabama, on Friday, downing tree limbs, causing flooding, and trapping some people under debris, officials said. There was one reported injury.

The Columbia Police Department said in a news release that the bodies of three people were found in a auto submerged in a Maury County creek Thursday afternoon. The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said the victims were a 19-year-old female and two 22-year-old males.

The new tornado Friday follows unusually warm weather that spawned tornadoes from Arkansas to Michigan, CBS News reported, and states of emergency were declared in Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee as the damage continued through to the weekend. A visiting insurance agent told them the house was a total loss. But Perkins – who survived the storm hunkered down inside a closet with her husband – said she was happy just to be alive.

Perkins’ neighbors weren’t as fortunate. Two people in one home died.

Deadly storms like the ones that came through during Christmas week are quite unusual as tornado season in the South does not start until early Spring.