Tag Archives: 10 deaths

Hurricane Milton leaves behind at least 10 reported dead

St. Lucie County Sheriffs Office destroyed

Important Takeaways:

  • Hurricane Milton made landfall on Siesta Key on the Florida Gulf Coast on Wednesday night as a major Category 3 hurricane with 120 mph winds as the state endured an assault of at least 19 tornadoes that resulted in at least five of 10 reported deaths so far.
  • It never lost hurricane strength as it crossed the state exiting near Cape Canaveral on Thursday morning.
  • Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson said the county had more than a dozen confirmed tornado touchdowns, and one destroyed a senior community neighborhood made up of mostly mobile homes.
  • “They didn’t stand a chance,” he said. The sheriff’s office announced Thursday that five people had died in the county.
  • At 11 a.m., the hurricane was located about 135 miles east-northeast of Cape Canaveral and 205 miles north-northwest of Great Abaco Island, Bahamas with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph. moving east-northeast at 20 mph. Its eye had moved off the coast as of 4 a.m. after spending nearly seven hours crossing the state.
  • More than 18 inches of rain and 101 mph gusts were reported in St. Petersburg with multiple areas flooded from rain and storm surge there and up and down the Gulf Coast. A 103 mph gust was reported as deep as Mulberry in Polk County, according to the National Weather Service.
  • The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season has had 13 named storms including nine hurricanes, four of which grew to major hurricane strength, and four tropical storms.
  • Hurricane season runs from June 1-Nov. 30.

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U.S. winter storms cause 10 deaths, flight cancellations, power outages

(Reuters) – At least 10 people died, more than 1,000 flights were canceled and hundreds of thousands were without power in five states on Saturday as a massive winter storm system dumped snow, freezing rain and hail from Texas to Michigan.

Hurricane-force wind gusts, golf-ball-sized hail and 2 to 5 inches (5-13 cm)of snow fell on Friday night and early Saturday as storms pushed from Texas through the Southeast and Great Lakes into Maine, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

More snow with accumulations between 6 to 12 inches was expected through Sunday in parts of Illinois, Michigan, northern New York and New England.

“The real danger comes from the wind and ice accumulation,” said NWS forecaster Bob Oravec in College Park Maryland.

More than half an inch of ice was predicted to cake highways and roads across the South and Northeast from Saturday night to Sunday morning, he said.

“The ice and wind will make driving treacherous, and trees can snap and knock out power and do other damage,” he said.

Two people were killed when the storm destroyed a trailer home in northwestern Louisiana late Friday, according to the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office. Local media reported that a third person died after a tree fell on a home in that state.

A fourth person was killed Friday in the storms when a car slide off the road and into a creek in Dallas, NBC news reported.

A firefighter and a police officer in Lubbock, Texas, were killed Saturday after a car slid on ice-slicked U.S. Interstate Highway 27 as they were investigating a traffic accident, Lubbock Fire officials said.

Three more storm-related deaths occurred in Pickens County in western Alabama, CNN reported, but details were not immediately available.

A 10th person died in southeastern Oklahoma on Saturday morning after the 58-year-old man was swept away while his pickup truck was stalled in deep water on a flooded road, the Houston Chronicle reported.

More than 257,000 homes and businesses were without power across Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas according the tracking site PowerOutage.us. Heavy outages in Texas, Michigan and Illinois were largely repaired by late Saturday afternoon.

The bulk of the nation’s flight delays and cancellations were at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, with more than 1,000 flights canceled and hundreds more delayed, according to flightaware.com.

Tornadoes damaged or destroyed some buildings in Arkansas and Missouri, forecasters said.

NWS said more than 18 million people in Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma remained at risk of tornadoes and flooding rains. Oravec said that hurricane-force wind gusts of about 75 mph (120 kph) hit the southeast.

As the system pushes eastward, rain should end overnight in many southern states, but the Northeast and New England can expect severe weather to last for another day, he said.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Cynthia Osterman)