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Hurricane Sally made landfall near the Florida-Alabama line, US on Wednesday (local time) with winds of 105 mph (168.98 km / h) and rain measured in feet, not inches, flooding homes and trapping people at high tide as it slid inland by what could be a long, slow, disastrous rain through the Deep South.
Moving at an agonizing 3 mph (4.83 km / h), or as fast as a person can walk, the storm made landfall at 4.45 a.m. near Gulf Shores, Alabama, hitting the Mobile, Alabama and Pensacola, Florida metropolitan areas, which have a combined population of nearly 1 million.
Emergency crews removed people from flooded houses. In Escambia County, which includes Pensacola, more than 40 were rescued, including a family of four that was found in a tree, Sheriff David Morgan said.
Gerald Herbert / AP
Hurricane Sally made landfall on Wednesday near Gulf Shores, Alabama, as a Category 2 storm, pushing a surge of ocean water onto shore and dumping torrential rain that meteorologists say would cause dangerous flooding from the Florida Panhandle to Mississippi and inland in the next few days. .
He estimated that thousands more will need to flee the rising waters in the coming days. County officials urged residents to stick to texting to communicate with family and friends to keep cell phone service open for 911 calls.
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“There are entire communities that we will have to evacuate,” Morgan said. “It is going to be a tremendous operation for the next few days.”
The storm collapsed a section of the Three Mile Bridge across Pensacola Bay, the sheriff said, and crews struggled to stop a barge that had come loose and did not make its way to a nearby bridge that is part of Interstate 10. Los Officials closed I-10, parallel to the Gulf Coast, in the worst affected areas of Florida and Alabama
Gerald Herbert / AP
A man watches the flooding in downtown Pensacola, Florida.
More than 2 feet of rain (61 centimeters) were recorded near Naval Air Station Pensacola, and nearly 3 feet (0.91 meters) of water-covered streets in downtown Pensacola, the National Weather Service reported.
“It’s not common for you to start measuring rainfall in feet,” forecaster David Eversole said in Mobile. “Sally moves so slowly, which is why she keeps hitting and hitting and hitting the area with tropical rain and powerful winds. It’s just a nightmare. “
The storm knocked out about half a million homes and businesses.
Gerald Herbert / AP
People play in a flooded parking lot in Navarre Beach, Florida.
It was the second hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast in less than three weeks and the latest hit in one of the busiest hurricane seasons ever recorded, so frenzied that forecasters have almost revised the alphabet of storm names by two months. and a half still to go. Let’s go. At the beginning of the week, Sally was one of five simultaneously record-breaking storms in the Atlantic, strung like charms on a bracelet.
Like the wildfires raging on the West Coast, the onslaught of hurricanes has focused attention on climate change, which scientists say is causing slower, rainier, more powerful and more destructive storms.
An emergency team rescued two people on Dauphin Island, Alabama, after the hurricane ripped the roof off their home and the rest of the home began to crumble.
Gerald Herbrt / AP
Hurricane Sally is moving slowly, at a rate that allows the storm to collect large amounts of water to discharge on land.
“When things started to unravel and fall apart, they got scared and asked for help,” Dauphin Island Mayor Jeff Collier said by phone. He said no one was injured.
In Orange Beach, Alabama, winds blew away the walls in a corner of a condo building, exposing condo interiors on at least five floors, a video posted online showed. Other images showed boats being pushed ashore by storm surge.
At least 50 people in Orange Beach were rescued from flooded homes and taken to shelters, Mayor Tony Kennon said.
Gerald Herbert / AP
Entire communities will have to be evacuated as a result of the hurricane.
“We have some people that we just couldn’t get to because the water is too high,” Kennon said. “But they are safe at home, as soon as the water recedes, we will rescue them.”
The street lights went out in downtown Mobile. The trees bowed as the rain blew sideways in the howling wind. In downtown Pensacola, water rushed down some streets like river rapids, forming shells as it hit buildings and rose above car tires.
Before sunrise, the water was running up to the doors of Jordan Muse’s car outside the Pensacola hotel, where his family took refuge after fleeing their mobile home. The power supply was cut off early in the morning, so it was too loaded to sleep. Her 8-year-old son was playing with toys under the desk in the hotel room while Muse stared out the window, watching the rain roll on the sheets.
Uncredited / AP
This GOES-16 GeoColor satellite image shows Hurricane Sally moving slowly ashore from the Gulf of Mexico.
“Motorized trucks are the only ones on the water and they’re the biggest,” Muse said. “I can’t believe it got so bad. That’s why we came here. “
Michele Lamar-Acuff awoke to the thud of a small tree falling against a window in her home in Pensacola. Waist-deep water ran down her street. Above the loud hers of the wind, she heard what sounded like the explosion of transformers.
“I don’t feel safe to leave,” Lamar-Acuff said from the porch of a neighbor’s house. “I just stay and hope for the best.”
Gerald Herbert / AP
The storm will cause big problems for the next few days.
Sally flew ashore as a Category 2 storm, but weakened to a still dangerous Category 1, with 80 mph winds, midmorning. It was moving northeast at 5 mph (7 kph). Forecasters warned that heavy rains will continue through Thursday as the storm moves inland over Alabama and into central Georgia.
Stacy Stewart, a forecaster with the National Hurricane Center, said the rain will be “catastrophic and life-threatening” in parts of the Gulf Coast. Forecasters predicted 10 to 20 inches (51 centimeters) of rain, with up to 35 inches (89 centimeters) at some points.
“Sally has a characteristic that you don’t see often and it’s a slow ground speed, and that’s going to exacerbate the flooding,” said Ed Rappaport, deputy director of the hurricane center. He compared the storm’s slow pace to that of Hurricane Harvey, which flooded Houston in 2017.
Hunter Dawkins / AP
The waters of the Gulf of Mexico, driven by Hurricane Sally, flood this street in Pass Christian, Mississippi.
Sally’s effects were felt along the northern Gulf Coast. Low-income properties in southeastern Louisiana were flooded by the surge. The water covered Mississippi beaches and parts of the highway that runs parallel to them.
US President Donald Trump issued emergency declarations for parts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox News Channel that Trump was in contact with state governors and was willing to help “in every way possible.”
Hurricane Laura struck southwestern Louisiana on August 27. Thousands of people were still without power due to that storm, and some were still in shelters.
DEVON RAVINE / AP
Corbin Boyce holds an American flag on the beach near Fort Walton Beach, Forida, as strong winds and waves from Hurricane Sally hit the shoreline.
Meanwhile, in the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Teddy became a hurricane with winds of 160 kph (100 mph). It was located more than 800 miles (1,300 km) east of the Lesser Antilles. Forecasters said it could reach Category 4 before approaching Bermuda, which was hit directly by Hurricane Paulette just days ago.
