A storm system sweeps across the Southeast triggering tornado watches and damaging winds

ATLANTA (AP) — A play tempest strategy sweeping crossed the Southeast brought tornado warnings to Mississippi and Louisiana, and past took purpose astatine parts of Georgia and Florida, arsenic radical successful the Northeast were yet getting a reprieve from weeks of bitterly acold temperatures.

Some of the fiercest upwind successful the South was reported adjacent Lake Charles, Louisiana, wherever precocious winds from a thunderstorm overturned a equine trailer and a Mardi Gras float, damaged an airdrome pitchy span and flung the metallic awning from a location into powerfulness lines. The harm was documented by National Weather Service employees who surveyed the area.

Power poles were snapped and toppled adjacent the Louisiana towns of Jena, Cheneyville and Donaldsonville, the upwind work reported.

No deaths oregon superior injuries were reported, but the harm reports came arsenic the tempest strategy continued into parts of southbound Georgia and the Florida Panhandle, which were nether tornado watches connected Sunday.

The storms led to immoderate powerfulness outages crossed confederate states, but obscurity adjacent the monolithic fig of outages caused by crystal storms precocious past period successful bluish Mississippi and Nashville, Tennessee. By precocious Sunday afternoon, astir 11,000 customers were without energy successful Texas and much than 9,000 had nary work successful bluish Florida, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide.

Meanwhile, the Northeast was opening to thaw aft a weekslong agelong of uncommonly acold weather.

Boston was moving astir 7 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 14 Celsius) beneath mean for February past week, and the metropolis was connected gait for its coldest wintertime successful much than a decade. Boston remained acold connected Sunday, but this week’s forecast called for temperatures climbing into the precocious 30s and debased 40s, which is person to the seasonal average.

On the West Coast, overmuch of California braced for a almighty wintertime tempest that was expected to bring drenching thunderstorms, damaging winds and dense snowfall successful upland areas. Jacob Spender, a upwind work meteorologist successful Sacramento, urged radical to instrumentality precautions successful the coming days.

“So if they are traveling, packing wintertime information kits. Anything to beryllium prepared. This is simply a bigger system, and a large system,” Spender said.

Rain that began Sunday successful the San Francisco Bay Area was forecast to intensify passim the time and overnight, bringing the hazard of flooding. Forecasters said the Sierra Nevada, including skis resorts astir Lake Tahoe, could spot up to 7 feet (two meters) of snowfall earlier the tempest moves done precocious Wednesday.

To the south, Los Angeles country residents successful immoderate neighborhoods scarred by past year's devastating wildfires were nether an evacuation informing done Tuesday due to the fact that of the imaginable for mud and debris flows. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said she's ordered exigency crews and metropolis departments to hole to respond to immoderate problems.

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Associated Press journalists Christopher Weber successful Los Angeles; Julie Walker successful New York City; Patrick Whittle successful Portland, Maine; and Jeff Martin successful Atlanta contributed.

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