Tornadoes Rip U.S. Southeast
January 23, 2017
Tornadoes swept through parts of the southeastern United States over the weekend, killing 20 people and injuring and displacing many others. Most of the deaths—15 of them—occurred in the state of Georgia. Four others were killed in Mississippi and one person died in northern Florida. The tornadoes erupted from a violent storm front that also hit the states of Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina.
This satellite image shows the strong storm front over the southeastern United States on Jan. 22, 2017. The storm killed 20 people in 3 different states. Credit: NASA/NOAA/GOES
The storm hit first in Louisiana early on Saturday, January 21, as severe weather damaged homes and caused injuries around the north-central city of Natchitoches. The storm then roared into southern Mississippi, where predawn tornadoes killed four people in the city of Hattiesburg.
Tornadoes touched down as the storm passed through Alabama, but the full wrath of the storm hit southern Georgia on Sunday, January 22. Tornadoes ripped in a northeasterly direction through southern Brooks, Cook, and Berrien counties, killing 11 people and devastating parts of several communities. Four other people died in tornadoes near the city of Albany in southwestern Dougherty County, and one person was killed in northern Florida’s Columbia County. Tornadoes also touched down as the storm front crossed South Carolina.
The powerful southern storm prompted the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Storm Prediction Center to issue a rare “high risk” severe weather outlook early Sunday—the first such “high risk” day since June 2014 when storms raked through Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri.
