Christmas Day spreads twisters across far South

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

— A Christmas Day tornado outbreak left damage across the Deep South while holiday travelers in the nation’s much colder midsection battled sometimes treacherous driving conditions from freezing rain and blizzard conditions.

Conditions were volatile throughout the afternoon and into the night with tornado warnings in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. The storms were blamed for two deaths and several injuries, and left homes from Louisi-ana to Alabama damaged.

In Mobile, a tornado or high winds damaged homes and knocked down power lines and large tree limbs in an area just west of downtown around nightfall, said Nancy Johnson, a spokesman for the Mobile County Commission. WALATV’s tower camera captured a large funnel cloud headed toward downtown.

“We haven’t verified what it was, but we have an area that we heard has damage to homes,” she said.

Meanwhile, blizzard conditions were hitting the nation’s midsection.

Earlier in the day, winds toppled a tree onto a pickup in the Houston area, killing the driver. Icy roads already were blamed for a 21-vehicle pileup in Oklahoma, and the Highway Patrol said a 28-year-old woman was killed in a crash on a snowy U.S. highway near Fairview.

Blizzard conditions were possible for parts of Illinois, Indiana and western Kentucky with predictions of 4-7 inches of snow.

No injuries were confirmed immediately, but fire crews were still making door-to-door checks in the hardest hit areas of Mobile. The Mobile Fire Rescue Department, which was providing storm updates through Twitter, said Murphy High School was damaged and that there was a gas leak at a nearby apartment building.

An apparent tornado caused damage in the west Alabama town of Grove Hill, about 80 miles north of Mobile. Trees fell on a few houses in central Louisiana’s Rapides Parish, but there were no injuries reported late Tuesday, and crews were cutting trees out of roadways to get to people in their homes, said sheriff’s Lt. Tommy Carnline. Possible damage also was reported near McNeil, Miss.

Fog blanketed highways, including arteries in the Atlanta area where motorists slowed as a precaution. In New Mexico, drivers across the eastern plains battled snow, ice and low visibility.

At least three tornadoes were reported in Texas, though only one building was damaged, according to the National Weather Service.

More than 400 flights nationwide were canceled by 7 p.m., according to the flight tracker FlightAware.com. More than half of the flights were canceled by American Airlines and its regional affiliate, American Eagle.

American is headquarteredand has its biggest hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Christmas lights also were knocked out with more than 100,000 customers without power in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.

And in Louisiana, quartersized hail was reported early Tuesday in the western part of the state, and a WDSU viewer sent a photo to the TV station of what appeared to be a waterspout around the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in New Orleans. There were no reports of crashes or damage.

As a cold front dipped south, heavy snow began to fall in north Texas, including in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Freezing temperatures were even forecast for parts of deep south Texas overnight.

Snow was falling at a rate of an inch to 1.5 inches an hour in parts of north Texas along the Oklahoma border on Tuesday afternoon, said Greg Carbin, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center.

Visibility at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was down to a half-mile, and in downtown Dallas, visibility was at a quarter-mile.

Meanwhile, about a dozen counties in Missouri were under a blizzard warning from Tuesday night until noon today.

In southwestern Oklahoma, high winds were combining with snowfall to create blizzard conditions. Near-zero visibility was possible.

The pileup in Oklahoma City began about 3 a.m. Tuesday when a semi-trailer jackknifed on Interstate 40 on a bridge over the Oklahoma River, state Highway Patrol Trooper Betsy Randolph said. Other vehicles hit the truck and other trucks slid into the vehicles, sandwiching them, she said.

In all, there were 10 separate crashes involving 21 vehicles and three tractor-trailers. Several people were injured.

Crews treated bridges on Interstate 35 south of Oklahoma City, and icy conditions made driving difficult near Tulsa late Tuesday. In western Oklahoma, officials reported slick and hazardous conditions on I-40 in Beckham, Washita and Custer counties, which were getting sleet and blowing snow.

Officials cautioned as temperatures fell during the day that roads that had been wet were likely to freeze.

The holiday conjures visions of snow and ice, but twisters this time of year are not unheard of. Ten storm systems in the past 50 years have spawned at least one Christmastime tornado with winds of 113 mph or more in the South, said Chris Vaccaro, a National Weather Service spokesman in Washington, via e-mail.

The most lethal were the storms of Dec. 24-26, 1982, when 29 tornadoes in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi killed three people and injured 32; and those of Dec. 24-25, 1964, when two people were killed and about 30 people injured by 14 tornadoes in seven states.

Quarter-sized hail reported early Tuesday in western Louisiana was expected to be just the start of a severe weather threat on the Gulf Coast, said meteorologist Mike Effersonat the weather service office in Slidell.

Storms along the Gulf Coast could pack winds up to 70 mph, heavy rain, more large hail and dangerous lightning in Louisiana and Mississippi, Efferson said. Furthermore, warm, moist air colliding with a cold front could produce dangerous straight-line winds.

The storm was moving quickly as it headed into northeast Louisiana and Mississippi into the late afternoon and early evening, said Bill Adams at the weather service’s Shreveport office.

In Mississippi, Gov. Phil Bryant urged residents to have a plan for any severe weather.

“It only takes a few minutes, and it will help everyone have a safe Christmas,” Bryant said. Information for this article was contributed by Janet McConnaughey, Daniel Wagner, Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Jim Van Anglen and Chuck Bartels of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/26/2012