Delta Brings Tornado Threat to Carolinas as Weakening Storm Dumps Rain Along East Coast

Wire Service
By Wire Service
October 11, 2020Weather
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Delta Brings Tornado Threat to Carolinas as Weakening Storm Dumps Rain Along East Coast
Floodwater covers a road following Hurricane Delta just southeast of Lake Charles, La., on Oct. 10, 2020. (Chris Granger/The Advocate via AP)

More than 400,000 households and businesses were in the dark Sunday morning after Hurricane Delta, which hammered Louisiana, weakened to a post-tropical cyclone and headed across the Southeast.

Most of the customers without electricity, about 320,000 of them, were in Louisiana, where the hurricane made landfall Friday, according to Sunday afternoon estimates from poweroutage.us. Another 56,000 customers in Texas were without power, while Mississippi reported almost 29,000 outages.

About 9,000 were without power in Georgia and South Carolina, where Delta was expected to dump rain Sunday before moving up the East Coast.

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Caleb Cormier moves debris after Hurricane Delta moved through in Lake Charles, La., on Oct. 10, 2020. (Gerald Herbert/AP Photo)

In Lilburn, Georgia, a train derailed after heavy rain overnight. Firefighters found the train on its side, with 38 cars derailed, some of them on fire. The locomotive’s engineer and conductor were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, according to Gwinnett County Fire and Emergency Services.

Delta still had 25 mph winds as it passed about 60 miles south of Nashville, Tennessee, late Sunday morning. It was expected to weaken significantly by early Monday, according to the National Weather Service.

Northeast Georgia and the western portion of Virginia and the Carolinas could see up to 6 inches of rain, creating flash flooding risks across the region, the weather service said. The Central Appalachians and southern New Jersey could get drenched as well, forecasters said.

Tornadoes are possible across the Carolinas on Sunday, the weather service said. Flash flooding is possible from north Georgia to southern Virginia.

Five tornadoes were reported in the Atlanta metro area. In Covington, east of Atlanta, a suspected tornado left one person with minor injuries and damaged a homeless shelter, displacing 30 people, the city’s emergency management director, Jody Nolan, told CNN.

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A garage partially destroyed by Hurricane Laura has the word, “Louisiana” written on it, in southwest La., on Oct. 10, 2020. (Chris Granger/The Advocate via AP)

Still Recovering From Laura, Lake Charles Hit Again

As Delta moved away from Louisiana, it left parts of the southwestern corner of the state with 17 inches of rainfall.

“Even if it wasn’t quite as powerful as Hurricane Laura it was much bigger,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Saturday. “Obviously, this was a very serious, very large and powerful storm that produced significant amounts of damage.”

No fatalities were reported.

Delta left a trail of “hazards like flooded roads, downed power lines and displaced wildlife” across the state, Edwards tweeted. He urged residents to remain vigilant.

Lake Charles, which faced the brunt of Hurricane Laura’s destruction, saw significant flooding after Delta passed through, and Delta’s flooding surpassed Laura’s, Mayor Nic Hunter said.

The city of 78,000 is still recovering from Laura’s 150-mph winds in August and now must deal with the double whammy of wind and flood damage, the mayor said, adding that Delta forced more residents to evacuate than did Laura.

Highways out of Lake Charles were packed as people fled Delta, and about 7,000 residents were still displaced from Laura when Delta hit, he said.

“Already we’re picking up the pieces, but we have quite a road ahead of us. There’s a lot of homes that were damaged from Laura, and now it’s just adding insult to injury,” the governor said Saturday.

In Texas, a utility company said it could take up to a week to restore power to customers along the state’s southeastern border.

Delta Sets Records

Hurricane Delta is the 25th named storm of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season.

It first hit Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula Wednesday before making landfall with 100-mph winds near Creole, Louisiana, not far from Laura’s landfall in August.

Delta was the fifth hurricane to make landfall in the United States this year—the most since 2005—and was the 10th named storm to make landfall this year in the continental United States—the most since nine landfalls were recorded in 1916.

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