Tornado touches down in Birmingham, Alabama

“He and I just huddled together and saw trees fly past us, and a shipping container flip over”, Ables said. A Birmingham police spokesman said trees were down and people were trapped inside damaged houses, adding that several people were taken to hospitals for treatment of minor injuries.

The National Weather Service urged locals to stay off the roads after the twister touched down at around 5 p.m. local time (6 p.m. ET) in Jefferson County, Alabama.

The National Weather Service has issued flood warnings for parts of northern Alabama following days of heavy rain and severe weather. Birmingham Mayor William Bell there were no reports of missing people, but the area was still searched.

The agency says this increases the number of deaths in the state to eight, and the number of missing persons to two.

National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Stefkovich tells our colleagues at Alabama Public Radio that, “we have a number of storm systems coming through, in fact we expect more rain going into Sunday night and into Monday, so that’s only going to make things worse”. Further details were not immediately available.

Recovery crews and utility workers began cleaning up widespread damage on Thursday left by severe storms that spawned tornadoes across six states in the US South and Midwest.

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley on Thursday declared a state of emergency as the region braced for more rain that already had washed out many roads and bridges in the state, the governor’s office said.

A tornado touched down in Birmingham on Friday evening, but damage was limited.

Meteorologist Jason Holmes said eyewitnesses spotted the funnel and the agency has confirmed its presence.

Other parts of Texas and Oklahoma, including El Paso, are under winter storm warnings, while North Texas, central Oklahoma and central Kansas are under a winter storm watch.

Deadly storms moving across the southern United States produced a Christmas Day tornado that struck a small community just outside Birmingham, Alabama.

But he said any reports of tornado-like damage in the region will be treated as if it is a tornado.

Meanwhile, a weak EF-0 tornado, classified as having winds between 65 to 85 miles per hour, was confirmed by the NWS in Tuscaloosa County near Coaling.

Some Mississippi residents spent their Christmas giving rather than receiving this year.