Luis Estrella keeps dry under an umbrella while walking Sunday afternoon on Broad Street. (Brittany Hannah / RN-T.com)
Hardy Street in front of the University of Southern Mississippi campus is obstructed by debris blown Sunday by an apparent tornado in Hattiesburg, Miss. (Jana Edwards / The Associated Press)
John Freeman (from left), Emory Gale and Molly Sims watch the rain from underneath an awning at Mellow Mushroom on Broad Street. (Brittany Hannah / RN-T.com)
Click here to see an interactive weather map on Weather.com.
Tuesday A 50 percent chance of showers. Cloudy, with a high near 56. Calm wind becoming north around 5 mph. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible.
Tuesday Night Rain. Low around 41. Calm wind. Chance of precipitation is 90%.
Wednesday Rain likely. Cloudy, with a high near 54. Light and variable wind becoming west 10 to 15 mph in the morning. Winds could gust as high as 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
Wednesday Night Partly cloudy, with a low around 31.
Thursday Sunny, with a high near 58.
Thursday Night Partly cloudy, with a low around 32.
Friday A 20 percent chance of rain. Partly sunny, with a high near 55.
Friday Night A slight chance of rain and snow. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 29. Chance of precipitation is 20%.
Saturday Mostly sunny, with a high near 47.
Saturday Night Mostly clear, with a low around 24.
Sunday Sunny, with a high near 49.
Previously posted
A storm system spawning a tornado that caused severe damage Sunday in Hattiesburg, Miss., was kinder to Georgia, but managed to dump 1.35 inches of rain on Rome.
Scotty Hancock, Floyd County Emergency Management Agency director, said it was hard to say Sunday night if more rainfall overnight would cause problems. Floyd County is under a flash flood watch until 1 p.m. today.
He said flash flooding is not unusual during periods of heavy rain, but predicting what area rivers might do is more difficult.
“It maybe a day or two until we see anything on the rivers,” Hancock said.
The tornado that tore through Hattiesburg was part of a wave of severe storms that downed trees, damaged buildings and injured more than a dozen people.
The twister traveled down one of Hattiesburg’s main streets and mangled homes, commercial buildings and structures on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi. Emergency officials said at least 10 people were injured in surrounding Forrest County and three were hurt to the west in Marion County, but they weren’t aware of any deaths.
Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman Greg Flynn said it appears that a single tornado caused the damage in those two counties and Lamar County. Hundreds of homes are damaged in Forrest County, along with a couple dozen in the other two.
Flynn said the sheer scope of the damage was slowing the assessment of damage.
“The problem is, it was so strong that there’s so much debris that there’s a lot of areas they haven’t been able to get to yet,” he said.
Cindy Bullock, 47, was at home with her husband and dog, a terrier mix named Vinnie, when she heard the tornado coming. They ran to a hallway and covered their heads. It wasn’t long before the windows in the kitchen and bedroom exploded. The storm stripped all the shingles off the roof and left holes in it, while knocking over a large pine tree in the yard.
After dark, the Bullocks were trying to arrange their stuff inside so it wouldn’t get wet from the dripping water.
“I just looked out the window and I heard the rumbling. It sounded like a train. We ran to the hall, and the kitchen windows and the windows in the bedroom exploded. It happened pretty fast,” she said.
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