BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - The Latest on severe weather in the southern United States (all times local):
7 p.m.
A South Carolina coroner says a 65-year-old man is dead after a storm toppled his mobile home.
The Union County Coroner’s Office said Monday that J.C. Matthews Jr. was dead by the time emergency help arrived at the scene of his destroyed home in Whitmire. An autopsy is planned for Tuesday.
Authorities say Matthews’ brother rushed to the wreckage after seeing the mobile home and spoke to the injured man before calling for help.
___
5:15 p.m.
South Carolina officials say a mobile home flipped during severe storms that swept through the South, killing a person.
The administrative assistant to Union County Sheriff David Taylor says the person killed Monday afternoon hasn’t been identified.
Kim Bailey also says the National Weather Service hasn’t confirmed a tornado touched down, although she says the county emergency services officials believe that’s what caused the mobile home to flip.
Bailey says authorities received the call about the mobile home shortly before 3:40 p.m. Monday.
___
5 p.m.
The possibility of severe weather has postponed a welcome home party for South Carolina’s national championship women’s basketball team.
The university had planned a celebration Monday afternoon in Columbia to honor head coach Dawn Staley and her team. Weather forecasts prompted the school to initially push the event to Monday evening before postponing it altogether.
The school says it will announce details of the rescheduled celebration later this week. The city has announced a parade will be held Sunday afternoon.
The Lady Gamecocks beat Southeastern Conference rival Mississippi State 67-55 in the NCAA Tournament championship game Sunday night in Dallas.
Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams reached the Final Four this year.
___
1:40 p.m.
Severe weather rumbled into Georgia from Alabama, leaving some damage in its wake.
Georgia Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Lisa Rodriguez-Presley said the agency had gotten reports of trees down and structural damage to a fire station in Carrollton, about 50 miles west of Atlanta.
National Weather Service meteorologist Verona Murell said early Monday afternoon that much of north and central Georgia was under a severe thunderstorm watch, with tornado watches issued in some spots.
___
11:15 a.m.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has declared a state of emergency following an outbreak of severe storms that spawned destructive tornados and pockets of flooding.
Edwards signed the statewide declaration Monday before embarking on a trip to survey storm damage in Rapides and St. Martin parishes.
Edwards plans to meet with emergency officials in Alexandria, where the storm system damaged homes and buildings and knocked down power lines.
He also plans to conduct a briefing with local officials in St. Martin Parish, where a tornado Sunday flipped a mobile home over in Breaux Bridge and killed a mother and her 3-year-old daughter.
___
9:30 a.m.
The severe weather that battered Louisiana has left behind pockets of tornado damage and flooding from heavy rains.
Meteorologist Tim Destri of the National Weather Service in Slidell says drier air and sunny skies are pushing into Louisiana now that the last bands of severe thunderstorms have moved east into Mississippi.
Street flooding was still a problem in some communities. The stormy weather forced some of the state’s public school districts to cancel or delay the start of classes Monday.
Some of the heaviest rains fell in central Louisiana from Sunday into early Monday. C.S. Ross, a National Weather Service hydrologist in Shreveport, says nearly 8 inches of rain was reported in Grant Parish.
__
9:03 a.m.
Officials say severe weather has killed two people in Mississippi, including a woman who was desperately directing rescuers to her submerged car when she died.
Rankin County Coroner David Ruth says 52-year-old Jacqueline Williams ran off a road in Florence into a rain-swollen creek early Monday and dialed 911 from the sinking vehicle.
Ruth says the Florence woman was trying to relay her location to a dispatcher as the car went down. He says the woman told the operator she could hear sirens when the two lost contact.
Ruth says a swift-water recovery team later found her body in the creek outside the car.
Greg Flynn of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency says two people have been killed in the state because of severe weather. A woman died in the Delta town of Glendora when strong winds knocked a large tree onto her house Sunday night, and two people died earlier in Louisiana.
__
8:10 a.m.
Scores of Alabama schools are calling off classes because of the threat from strong storms that already have killed two people in Louisiana.
Administrators across southern Alabama canceled classes Monday rather than have children traveling to school amid torrential rains. The public school systems included two of the state’s largest in Mobile and Montgomery.
Forecasters said about 3 inches of rain already had fallen in parts of west Alabama, and the National Weather Service issued a tornado watch for the southern end of the state.
Alabama Power said more than 27,000 homes and businesses were without electricity.
The weather service says severe weather is also possible in southeastern Mississippi and the western Florida Panhandle.
A tornado flipped a mobile home in Louisiana, killing a mother and her 3-year-old daughter Sunday night.
___
1:45 a.m.
Severe storms that killed two people in Louisiana are taking aim at Alabama and other parts of the Southeast.
The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma says tornadoes and strong winds are likely Monday from parts of Mississippi extending to South Carolina. The greatest tornado risk is centered over southern Alabama.
A tornado flipped a mobile home in Louisiana on Sunday, killing a mother and her 3-year-old daughter. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards put the entire state on “high alert” and warned residents to stay off the roads. Power was knocked out to thousands of homes and businesses and downed trees were blocking roads.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.