Storm brings flood threat to 8 states

Remnants of Tropical Storm Gordon threaten to trigger flooding across eight states after pounding the Gulf Coast and claiming its first victim, a child killed in Florida.

DAUPHIN ISLAND, Ala. — Blamed for the death of a Florida baby and intense wind and rain that pummeled parts of the northern Gulf of Mexico coast, Tropical Depression Gordon weakened Wednesday but still spread bands of heavy rains across a swath of the South as it swirled over central Mississippi.

It promised more of the same on a forecast track expected to take it northeast into Arkansas, which was forecast to get heavy rain from the system by Wednesday night. By Saturday, what’s left of the storm was forecast to hook to the north, then northeast on a path toward the Great Lakes. National Weather Service offices in Missouri and Oklahoma said Gordon’s remnants could add to the rain caused by a frontal boundary already causing heavy rains in parts of the Midwest. Flash flood watches stretched from the Florida Panhandle, through parts of southwest Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa and Illinois.

Gordon never reached hurricane strength by the time it came ashore Tuesday night just west of the Mississippi-Alabama line. Its maximum sustained winds reached 70 mph. It knocked out power to at least 27,000 utility customers in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. By Wednesday afternoon, the numbers were down to about 5,800 in Alabama, 3,000 in Mississippi and a little more than 2,000 in Florida.

Pictures on social media showed damaged roofs and debris-strewn beaches and roads. However, no major damage or serious injuries were reported, other than the one fatality — a baby in a mobile home, struck by a large tree limb in Pensacola late Tuesday.

Officials with the sheriff’s office said the victim was 2 years old. Officials haven’t released the child’s identity.

Michael Barradas told the Pensacola News Journal he heard the loud crack and ran out of his mobile home and yelled, “Is everyone OK?“’ He says the mother said, “No, my baby’s in there.”

Barradas said he ran back in his home to get a flashlight, but by the time he returned the baby had stopped crying.

Rain spun around the storm’s center in the Jackson, Miss., area Wednesday afternoon. Bands swept up from the Gulf, dropped more rain on northwest Florida — where 10.48 inches had already fallen at Florida’s Pensacola International Airport by Wednesday morning — central Alabama and into Tennessee.

New Orleans, which had braced for severe flooding, was unscathed. And residents along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which expected a serious hit, were largely spared. A dozen casinos that shut down were allowed to reopen at noon Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Florence has been upgraded to a Category 4 hurricane and is likely to cause “lifethreatening” surf and rip current conditions in Bermuda later this week.

The National Hurricane Center said the storm’s maximum sustained winds Wednesday afternoon are estimated to be 130 mph. Hurricane Florence is centered about 1,295 miles eastsoutheast of Bermuda and is moving northwest at 13 mph.