Breaking News: Tropical Storm Sally Devastates Alabama and Florida with Category 2 Force

Tropical Storm Sally lashed Alabama and Florida last night with four months of torrential rain in just four hours!

SALLY made landfall near Gulf Shores, Alabama, this morning as a Category 2 storm. Emergency services said they were amazed to witness over four months of rain hit the ground in just four hours,” it was torrential and unstoppable” said one volunteer. It has since slightly weakened into a tropical storm, which of course is still powerful and dangerous. Forecasters fear that significant flooding is in store for coastal Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. Rainfall of  22-44 cm is expected in some areas.

Flights cancelled

Tropical storm Sally is the eighth named storm to make landfall in the south this year, the most in recorded history. It’s bringing severe flooding to the area and gusts of wind of up to 70 mph as it moves slowly north. Airlines including United, Delta and Southwest have posted flight waivers for travellers concerned about flying amid the threat of approaching Hurricane Sally.

Tropical-storm-force winds were spreading onshore along the Gulf Coast as of 4pm. CDT Tuesday, the National Hurricane Centre said, adding that the centre of the storm would “make landfall in the hurricane warning area late tonight or Wednesday.”

Infrastructure damaged and curfew imposed

The storm was so powerful that a portion of Pensacola’s Three Mile Bridge sustained significant damage. Work on the bridge was “just being completed,” said an emergency worker, and “unfortunately I’m hearing now that this bridge may be closed for a month or more. A crane fell into the bridge, we had a few barges that came loose and also rammed into the bottom of the bridge, so we’ll have major repairs on the bridge and also some structural engineering work that will need to take place before it opens again.” A curfew for residents is now in place due to looters taking advantage of the lack of police able to monitor local high streets.

Power off for half a million people

Rescue teams were moving away from response mode to recovery mode, as tonight’s planned curfew gets underway. The worker went onto say: “There’s a lot of electrical hazards, a lot of hazards just with the instability of the roads, so we need people to stay off the roads and give us these three days to recover and assess the damage.”

The storm is now moving north, bringing torrential rains and possible tornadoes. Parts of Pensacola are under as much as five feet of water from the storm. Now a tropical depression, Sally flooded buildings, ripped off roofs and left more than half a million people without power. Florida has become over the years accustomed to storms and floods, hurricanes and storms continue to cause severe damage to the area on a yearly basis.

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