Nate rapidly weakens over Alabama
BILOXI, Mississippi: Tropical Storm Nate rapidly weakened to become a tropical depression over Alabama on Sunday, although the fast-moving former hurricane left roads and buildings flooded in Mississippi after coming ashore there.
Nate’s maximum sustained winds dropped to 55 km per hour as it moved northeast into Alabama, prompting the National Hurricane Center to end its tropical storm warnings for the region on Sunday morning. Only a few hours earlier, it had been blowing at 70 mph but appeared to lack the devastating punch of its recent predecessors.
The fourth major storm to strike the United States in less than two months, Nate killed at least 30 people in Central America before entering the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and bearing down on the U.S. South. It has also shut down most oil and gas production in the Gulf.
Nate follows Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, which have devastated areas of the Caribbean and southern United States in the last two months.
The storm system’s centre will move inland over Mississippi and across the Deep South, Tennessee Valley and Central Appalachian Mountains through Monday, the National Hurricane Center said. Heavy rainfall and storm surge flooding remained a danger across the region, and the center said Florida’s Panhandle and parts of Alabama and Georgia might feel tropical-storm-force wind gusts, the center warned.
Nate made its first US landfall on Saturday evening near the mouth of the Mississippi river and then made a second one early on Sunday near Biloxi, Mississippi, whose 46,000 residents were warned that the highest storm surge could reach 11 to 12 feet.
Flood waters swept over streets in communities across Alabama and Mississippi, including over Highway 90 and to oceanside casinos in Biloxi, according to reports on social media.