At a Glance
- Three people were injured in Brewton, Alabama.
- Trees and utility poles were reported down in the Florida Panhandle.
- High-water rescues were carred out in Slidell, Louisiana.
Tropical Storm Claudette spawned a tornado that left dozens of homes in splintered ruins Saturday in southern Alabama.
"We've got probably about 50 homes pretty much destroyed," Escambia County, Alabama, Sheriff Heath Jackson told weather.com in a phone call Saturday afternoon.
Three people were injured, two of them "pretty critically," Jackson said.
(FORECAST: The Latest on Tropical Storm Claudette)
The radar-confirmed tornado hit two mobile home communities in the Escambia County town of Brewton, Alabama, about 60 miles north of Pensacola, Florida.
"You wouldn't even recognize them now," Jackson said.
Jackson said there were also reports of trees on homes and vehicles.
Aerial drone video showed debris scattered across a neighborhood.
Claudette flooded streets and brought heavy winds and severe weather to several areas of the Gulf Coast and inland as it moved across land throughout the day Saturday.
The storm, brewing for several days in the Gulf, was designated a tropical storm Saturday morning and downgraded to a tropical depression Saturday evening. Claudette's effects stretched from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle and were expected to move further inland through Sunday.
Tornadoes were reported in several areas. Several houses were damaed in Pace, Florida, which is in Santa Rosa County between Pensacola where the dozens of homes were damaged in Alabama.
“Nobody's hurt,” county spokesoman Sarah Whitfield told The Associated Press. “We're just thankful it happened after sunrise,” as opposed to overnight when most people were likely sleeping.
Highways and bridges were closed throughout the region Saturday morning, including parts of Highway 90 between Biloxi and Pass Christian, Mississippi. Flooding and sand covered much of the roadway, the Sun-Herald newspaper reported.
A journalist for the Sun-Herald shared video of elevated homes surrounded by water in Hancock, Mississippi.
In Slidell, Louisiana, police deployed high-water rescue vehicles due to widespread flooding in the city.
"We are currently clearing/have cleared approximately 40 to 50 vehicles out of the roadways due to them being flooded with water," the agency said in a social media post at about 6:30 a.m. CDT. "Last night/early this morning, we had to rescue multiple people from their flooded cars, along with a woman, who was on her way to the hospital, possibly going into labor."
There were no reports of major injuries or damage.
"We ask people to please use caution when driving around this morning," the post continued. "There is still a lot of debris and stalled vehicles in the area. Water is still high in some neighborhoods. Drive slow through floodwaters, especially in neighborhoods."
A wind gust of 81 mph was recorded in Pensacola Beach, Florida, where some windows were blown out of at least one hotel and a tractor trailer blew over on the Interstate 10 bridge across Escambia Bay.
Video posted to social media Saturday morning showed heavy rain in nearby Navarre Beach, Florida.
About 13,000 homes and businesses were without power early Saturday morning in the Florida Panhandle counties of Santa Rosa and Escambia, according to poweroutage.us.
There were also reports of downed trees and power lines and damaged buildings in both those counties after high winds and possible tornado Saturday morning.
Officials all along the coast monitored the storm closely Friday and overnight. On Saturday morning, some expressed relief that things weren't worse.
"I think we were very fortunate yesterday," Earl Eues, emergency management director for Terrebonne Parish in southeastern Louisiana, told The Weather Channel.
The parish was in the forecast cone for named storms four times last year, Eues said.
“We were hoping for a break this season and hopefully we can still get it. Claudette was a trial run for us," he said. “We did not know exactly how it would turn out. We always prepare for the worst.”
Claudette is putting a damper on the Father's Day and Juneteenth holiday weekend. Several local events were canceled in communities in the path of the storm.
“It’s something that means a lot to people, and there were people that were bummed out, like ‘I already had in my mind I was coming out there to celebrate,’” Seneca Hampton, an organizer of the Juneteenth Freedom Festival in Gautier, Mississippi, told the AP.
The festival was set to feature food trucks, vendors, a bounce house, face painting and free hamburgers and hot dogs. It's postponed until next month.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
