Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Tropical Storm Claudette Expected to Weaken After Causing Deaths and Damage

The storm was blamed for the deaths of at least 14 people, including 10 children. It also spawned strong tornadoes in Alabama over the weekend.

Danny Gonzales enters his flooded house in Slidell, La., on Saturday after Tropical Storm Claudette passed through the area.Credit...Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

Tropical Storm Claudette, which destroyed dozens of homes and was blamed for the deaths of at least 14 people, including 10 children, was expected to become a post-tropical cyclone by Tuesday afternoon and eventually dissipate, forecasters said.

After regaining tropical storm strength early on Monday while it bore down on areas of North Carolina, the storm veered far enough from the mainland United States that tropical storm and tornado warnings were dropped, the National Hurricane Center said.

The threat of heavy rain also diminished, with only about an inch of rainfall expected over the northern Outer Banks and southeastern Virginia in the early afternoon on Monday, the center said.

The storm was expected to become a post-tropical cyclone by Tuesday, but by then it should be somewhere over the North Atlantic near Nova Scotia, a Hurricane Center spokesman said.

Claudette formed in the Gulf of Mexico, producing a tornado that devastated a part of Escambia County in southern Alabama on Saturday with winds powerful enough to lift cars, the Alabama Emergency Management Agency said. About 20 people were injured, according to the agency.

The storm also unleashed up to 15 inches of rain throughout southeastern Louisiana, southern Mississippi, southern Alabama and the western Florida Panhandle over the weekend, forecasters said.

A man in his early 20s and his 3-year-old son were killed on Saturday night in Tuscaloosa County, Ala., after a tree fell on their mobile home, said Nick Lolley, the director of the Tuscaloosa County Emergency Management Agency.

There were many reports of flooding and flash flooding across the state and some people required swift water rescue, according to a spokesman for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency.

On Saturday, a 31-year-old man was swept away by floodwater near Pebble Creek Parkway in Birmingham. On Monday morning, after an extensive search, the authorities found the body of the man, Timothy Lewis Bragg, Capt. Bryan Harrell of the Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service Department said.

About 100 miles away in Fort Payne, MaKayla Ross, 23, drowned on Saturday after her car drove off the road into a swollen creek, The Associated Press reported. She was discovered about 9 a.m. on Sunday, said Bruce Wilson, the deputy coroner at the DeKalb County Coroner’s Office.

Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama declared a state of emergency that directs the Alabama Emergency Management Agency to assess the damage and seek state and federal help for the affected areas.

“My heart and prayers continue going out to the loved ones of those tragically lost in the storms,” she said.

The authorities in Alabama also said there were indications that a multivehicle crash on Saturday afternoon on Interstate 65 that killed nine children and one adult was related to the storm. Eight of the children were returning from a beach vacation in a van when it collided with a sport-utility vehicle on the highway in Fort Deposit, Ala., south of Montgomery.

There were preliminary indications that another vehicle had hydroplaned, causing a pileup, said Wayne Garlock, the Butler County coroner. The crash involved a total of 17 vehicles, including two commercial vehicles, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said. Seven of the vehicles caught fire.

The storm brought intermittent rain as it moved through the region. The number of people affected was still being assessed on Monday, a spokesman for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency said.

The authorities in Escambia County, where the tornado touched down, told The A.P. that it had leveled a mobile home park and ripped the roof from a high school gym.

Video
Video player loading
After forming on Saturday in the Gulf of Mexico, the storm dropped several inches of rain in the Mississippi Delta and along the Gulf Coast. Tornadoes were reported in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi.CreditCredit...Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

While the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season is just getting underway, many residents along the Gulf Coast are still recovering from a string of storms that battered the region last summer and fall.

Seven named storms thrashed the Gulf Coast in 2020, including Eta, which slammed Florida twice, leaving tens of thousands without electricity and flooding beach communities.

Louisiana, one of the hardest-hit states, had at least five storms, including Zeta and Hurricane Laura, which made landfall on the state’s coast as a Category 4 storm with 150-mile-an-hour winds, destroying office buildings, a sky bridge, trees and power lines. The storm was also responsible for at least six deaths in the state.

Claudette is the third named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season. In late May, a subtropical storm named Ana developed northeast of Bermuda, becoming the first named storm of the current hurricane season.

It was the seventh year in a row that a named storm developed in the Atlantic before the official start of the season on June 1. Ana was followed by Bill, which formed hundreds of miles off the coast of North Carolina last week and became a tropical storm before being downgraded as it remained at sea.

Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast that there would be 13 to 20 named storms this year, six to 10 of which would be hurricanes, and three to five major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher in the Atlantic.

Last year, there were 30 named storms, including six major hurricanes, forcing meteorologists to exhaust the alphabet for the second time and move to using Greek letters.

It was the highest number of storms on record, surpassing the 28 from 2005, and included the second-highest number of hurricanes on record.

Hurricanes have become increasingly dangerous and destructive with each passing season.

Researchers have found that climate change has produced storms that are more powerful and have heavier rain. The storms also have a tendency to dawdle and meander. A combination of rising seas and slower storms also make for higher and more destructive storm surges.

Reporting was contributed by Maria Cramer, Johnny Diaz, Mike Ives, Alyssa Lukpat, Heather Murphy, Azi Paybarah and Eduardo Medina.

Derrick Bryson Taylor is a general assignment reporter. He previously worked at The New York Post's PageSix.com and Essence magazine. More about Derrick Bryson Taylor

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT