Death Toll Climbs From Weekend Tornadoes Across Southeast

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A weekend of deadly weather in the Southeast killed at least 15 people and injured dozens more, authorities said Sunday morning, while residents along the Georgia-Florida line braced for more intense, fast-moving storms – including unusually strong “long track” twisters.

At least 4.8 million people were under the high risk area for tornadoes as of Sunday; the total area of bad weather in the Southeast, who fall under the slight risk category or worse, is about 38 million people.

The worst of the storms happened before dawn Sunday in a mobile home park in Cook County, Ga. Coroner Tim Purvis said an apparent tornado “leveled” numerous homes, killing seven people. He said emergency responders were still searching for survivors hours later.

Purvis estimated the park has about 40 mobile homes, and roughly half of them were destroyed. Photographs from Cook County posted by WSB-TV showed a large area strewn with twisted metal and broken wooden beams, with some mobile homes damaged but still standing.

Another four people died in the same region, including two people who died after their mobile home got struck by an apparent tornado in Brooks County, which moved the home roughly 100 yards.

“A tornado hit a mobile home, picked it up and put it in the middle of Highway 122,” Brooks County Coroner Michael Miller said. “I don’t know if it rolled or was lifted, but it blocked the entire highway.”

He said the storm struck in the middle of the night, at about 4 a.m. Sunday, and both people inside the home were pronounced dead at the scene.

Catherine Howden of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency said earlier Sunday that the deaths occurred in Cook, Brooks and Berrien counties in southern Georgia near the Georgia-Florida line. She said another 23 people were injured.

The Weather Channel reported a tornado struck near Albany, Ga., Sunday afternoon and law enforcement officials said it could be “days” before they are able to complete a search for more victims.

The southeastern United States was pounded by storms, high winds and unstable weather over the weekend, with an overall death toll of 15. Four people died after a tornado with winds above 136 mph tore a 25-mile path across southern Mississippi before dawn Saturday.

In South Carolina, the National Weather Service has confirmed that two tornadoes struck over the weekend, injuring one woman who was trapped in a mobile home that was damaged near Blackville. The weather service says a tornado touched down about 3:45 p.m. Saturday in Barnwell County and moved into Bamberg County. The other occurred in Orangeburg County a few minutes later.

Patrick Marsh of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said 39 possible tornadoes were reported across the Southeast from early Saturday into Sunday evening – none immediately confirmed. Of that, 30 were reported in Georgia, four in Mississippi, and one each in Louisiana and South Carolina.

While the central part of the U.S. has a fairly defined tornado season – the spring – the risk of tornadoes “never really goes to zero” for most of the year in the southeast, said Patrick Marsh, the warning coordination meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

The last time that the prediction center issued a high-risk weather outlook – where forecasters are very confident of a tornado outbreak – was in 2014. Sunday marked only the third time since 2000 that any part of Florida had been at a high-risk for severe weather, Marsh said.

“This is a pretty rare event in this location,” Marsh said Sunday. “Any time the SPC issues a high-risk, for me, it’s sobering. “We’re coming to work and there’s a strong likelihood that people’s lives will forever be changed. It’s very sobering.”

Russell Schneider, the director of the Storm Prediction Center, said although many longtime Gulf Coast residents understand that severe weather and tornadoes could strike any time of year, some new to the area might not immediately associate January with a tornado outbreak.

“We live in a very mobile society, we’re moving around the country all the time, I think people in the Gulf Coast unfortunately understand these tragedies (are possible),” Schneider said.

January tornado outbreaks are rare but not unprecedented, particularly in the South. Data from the Storm Prediction Center shows that, over the past decade, the nation has seen an average 38 tornadoes in January, ranging from a high of 84 in 2008 to just four in 2014.

Associated Press reporters Jay Reeves, Brendan Farrington, Russ Bynum and Justin Juozapavicius contributed to this report.