Thousands without power as storms slam southeastern U.S.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Powerful storms left thousands of people without electricity in Florida and other southeastern U.S. states on Friday, with damaging winds toppling trees onto homes and power lines following days of deadly severe weather that produced tornadoes in Michigan, Tennessee and other states.

The U.S. National Weather Service said wind gusts of

114 km/h, just shy of hurricane force, were recorded in Tallahassee, where images posted on social media showed mangled metal and other debris from damaged buildings littering parts of Florida’s capital city.

The storm knocked two chimneys from apartment buildings at one Florida complex, where fallen trees covered a row of cars. Other damage included bent and twisted fencing at the baseball stadium of Florida State University, where classes were cancelled.

“Our area experienced catastrophic wind damage,” Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey said on the social platform X.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on social media that the state Division of Emergency Management was working with local officials to “do everything possible to return life to normalcy for our residents as quickly as possible.”

A statement from the city of Tallahassee blamed “possible tornadic activity” for the widespread damage in the city of 200,000 people. There were no immediate reports of injuries. The city said more than 66,000 customers were without electricity and 11 substations were damaged.

“Restoration will possibly take through the weekend,” the announcement said.

Strong thunderstorms were expected in Alabama near the Florida panhandle, where gusty winds could knock down tree limbs, the weather service said.

Nearly 230,000 homes and businesses from Mississippi to North Carolina were blacked out Friday afternoon, according to the tracking website poweroutage.us. Most of the outages were in Florida, where lights and air-conditioning were out for nearly 160,000 customers.

In Mississippi’s capital city of Jackson, authorities asked residents to conserve and boil water as a precaution after a power outage at one of its major water treatment plants. JXN Water, the local water utility, said customers could expect reduced water pressure as workers assessed damage from overnight storms.

“It will take many hours for the system to recover and some places may take longer,” Ted Henifin, the water system’s manager, said in a statement.

Several tornado warnings and watches were issued by the National Weather Service on Friday morning, but were lifted by midday as the threat shifted to damaging high winds.

Other parts of the U.S. South were cleaning up from storm damage inflicted earlier in the week. In the rural farming community of Vidalia, Georgia, and surrounding Toombs County, officials said a tornado left a path of destruction along

3.2 kilometres on Thursday.

Trees crashed onto about 10 houses and crews worked through the night to remove about 50 downed trees that were blocking roads, said Lynn Moore, emergency management director for Toombs County. Winds tore part of the roof from one Vidalia business and blew it across a road, where the debris smashed into a brick wall and fell onto an unoccupied SUV, Moore said.

Since Monday, 39 states have been under threat of severe weather and at least four people have died. On Wednesday and Thursday, about 220 million people were under some sort of severe weather risk, said Matthew Elliott, a Storm Prediction Center forecaster.