At least three people have died and more than a dozen were left injured across Louisiana over the past 24 hours as severe weather moves across the South carving a path of destruction, CNN reports.
According to the report by CNN, a tornado touched down in New Orleans around 4 p.m. CT Wednesday, the National Weather Service confirmed. A tornado debris signature was evident on radar and numerous power flashes were seen on tower cameras as the storm moved through the eastern portion of the city.
Damage has been reported, but the extent is unclear at this time.
This is one of 3 tornado reports across the New Orleans metro in the last two hours. The weather service has not issued a report with details on the path of the tornado yet, but the hardest hit areas were from Gretna to Arabi in Louisiana.
Wednesday’s severe weather is “worse than Hurricane Ida,” Gretna Mayor Belinda Constant told CNN affiliate WDSU. The hurricane hit the area last year.
A 56-year-old woman “died after a tornado destroyed her home” in Killona, about 30 miles west of New Orleans, according to a tweet from the Louisiana Department of Health. The identity of the woman was not immediately released, officials in St. Charles Parish said Wednesday.
Eight other people in the parish have non-life-threatening injuries, Sheriff Greg Champagne said during a news conference Wednesday.
Champagne said the tornado was violent.
“There’s a piece of debris on the levee behind you that came from our firing range, 1.7 miles away,” he said, adding this was the second time in two weeks a tornado touched down in St. Charles Parish. “This one created quite a bit of devastation.”
More than 300 miles north, a boy and his mother were found dead after a tornado destroyed their home Tuesday in the northwestern Louisiana community of Keithville, the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office said. The boy’s body was located Tuesday about a half-mile from the home, Sheriff Steve Prator told CNN affiliate KSLA.
The mother was found dead early Wednesday about a street over from where the house had been, and two other people in the community were injured, the sheriff’s office said.
And 20 people were injured in the small Union Parish town of Farmerville in northern Louisiana, near the Arkansas border, Farmerville Police Detective Cade Nolan said.
Across the rest of the state, debris where homes once stood and cars flipped upside down were seen in devastated communities where numerous residents told CNN they hid in their bathtubs in fear as they rode out the storm. The storm system knocked out power to more than 45,000 customers in Louisiana and more than 9,000 in Mississippi, according to PowerOutage.us.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency Wednesday in response to the storms, according to an emergency proclamation.
“This dangerous storm is still with us. Stay weather aware and heed the warnings of your local officials,” the governor tweeted
Louisiana Lt Gov. Billy Nungesser told CNN’s Anderson Cooper the state was lucky this past hurricane season, but this storm “didn’t spare us at all. And it touched every part of the state.”
The severe weather wreaking havoc all over Louisiana and moving across the Southeast is part of a massive system that also has been delivering heavy snow – and in some places blizzard conditions – in northern parts of the central US.
Wednesday’s threats come after storms Tuesday spawned tornadoes and splintered homes and businesses from Oklahoma and the Dallas-Fort Worth area to Mississippi and parts of Louisiana.
In total, 18 tornadoes were reported Wednesday in Louisiana and Mississippi, according to the Storm Prediction Center. This is in addition to the at least 22 tornado reports made since Tuesday from Oklahoma and Texas to Louisiana and Mississippi, including 17 from Tuesday to 6 a.m. CT Wednesday, and at least five since 6 a.m. CT Wednesday, including in Louisiana’s New Iberia.
Along with severe weather, a moderate risk of excessive rainfall that could lead to flash flooding exists Wednesday for parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and west-central Alabama, the Storm Prediction Center says.
Wednesday offered a Level 4 risk, the second highest of five levels – of severe storms for nearly 3 million people in eastern Louisiana, including New Orleans; southern Mississippi, including Gulfport; and southwestern Alabama, including Mobile, the prediction center said.
That level means widespread severe storms are likely. A risk that high is rare for December only five at that level have been assessed in December over the past decade, a CNN Weather analysis shows.