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Hurricane Sally crashed into the southern United States in slow motion, bringing torrential rain and storm surge, destroying ships and breaking bridges.
It made landfall as a Category 2, and while it is now a tropical storm, its glacial pace means there are still life-threatening warnings.
Pensacola, Florida, was severely affected, with a loose barge bringing down part of the Bay Bridge.
There are also storm surge warnings for Alabama as Sally heads north.
As of 4:00 p.m. local time (9:00 p.m. GMT), Sally was 55 miles (88 kilometers) north of Pensacola and close to the Alabama border. Its speed of 7 mph heading northeast is almost a sprint – at one point it was 3 mph.
Sally made landfall in Gulf Shores, Alabama, at 4:45 a.m. local time on Wednesday, with maximum winds of 105 mph.
Latest speeds are around 60 mph, but torrential rain and heavy storm surges have been the most damaging factors.
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Hurricane Sally is one of several storms in the Atlantic Ocean, and officials are running out of letters to name the hurricanes as they near the end of their annual alphabetical list.
What is the latest in damages?
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) reports that “catastrophic and life-threatening flooding continues in parts of the Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama.”
Precipitation is measured in feet rather than inches in some places, but 18 inches (45 cm) have been recorded in many areas.
Flooding to a depth of 5 feet struck downtown Pensacola. The storm surge was the third worst in the city’s history. Police told people not to go out to see the damage, saying, “You are slowing down our progress. Please stay home!”
Although the winds did not have the devastating power of deadly Hurricane Laura, which struck last month, they still ripped boats from moorings and sent a barge toward the bay bridge under construction. Certainly, they were tall enough to take down high-sided vehicles.
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Reuters
One of the barges that was released in Pensacola, Florida
Another barge broke loose and headed for the Escambia Bay Bridge, but fortunately made landfall.
The Escambia County Sheriff said he did not expect the devastation caused by Sally.
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Reuters
Overturned vehicle in Mobile, Alabama. Many roads were hit by falling trees.
Cavin Hollyhand, 50, who lives in Mobile, Alabama, told Reuters: “The rain is what stands out about this: it is unreal.”
“The danger of a life-threatening flood” remains on the Florida-Alabama border, the NHC said.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said many areas around Mobile were experiencing historic levels of flooding and urged people to heed the warnings.
The Gulf State Park Pier in Alabama suffered major damage.
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Reuters
Gulf Shores in Alabama welcomed Sally’s landfall and torrential rain
The latest on power outages from the website poweroutage.us lists some 290,000 customers without power in Alabama and 253,000 more in Florida.
In addition to knocking down the pylons, many trees were uprooted.
The rain appeared to fall sideways in Alabama, leading to submerged roads as the storm made landfall. Other areas along the coast were also affected, with flooded beaches and roads in Mississippi and low-lying properties in Louisiana covered by rising waters.
Alabama, Florida and Mississippi declared states of emergency before the storm.
Why the slow pace and what follows?
John De Block of the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama, told the New York Times that Sally was drifting “at the speed of a child in a candy store.”
Sally’s pace may be linked to climate change, experts say. A 2018 study in the journal Nature found that the speed at which hurricanes and tropical storms move over an area had decreased by 10% between 1949 and 2016, a drop that was related to an increase in total precipitation.
“Sally has a characteristic that you don’t see often, and it’s a slow ground speed that’s going to exacerbate the flood,” NHC Deputy Director Ed Rappaport told the Associated Press.
In addition to Sally, there are four other tropical cyclones: Paulette, Rene, Teddy, and Vicky, swirling in the Atlantic Ocean basin.
If only one more storm is officially named, Wilfred has already been chosen, meteorologists will run out of shortlisted names for the remainder of the year and begin naming new storms using the Greek alphabet.
