A flood warning was issued for the Base of Wisner overpass by the City of New Orleans via Twitter at about half past five local time.
The same area was also hit by a tornado on March 22 this year; it was rated an EF3 on the 0 to 5 scale for twister intensity. The March tornado, the strongest on record to hit New Orleans, killed a 25-year-old man and damaged or destroyed dozens of homes in Arabi.
As Wednesday’s tornado swept across the region, debris could be seen falling from the sky on New Orleans’s lower Canal Street, tweeted ABC News meteorologist Rob Marciano.
Photos and video from social media revealed damage in Marrero, on the south side of the Mississippi River, and below downtown New Orleans, where a shopping center appeared mangled.
This is unreal.
For the second time this year, WDSU’s Tower Camera has captured a large tornado on the ground in the Lower Ninth Ward and Arabi. Our hearts are broken. pic.twitter.com/J7wnMu51U0— wdsu (@wdsu) December 14, 2022
As storms continued to pass through southeast Louisiana Wednesday evening, more than 40,000 customers were without power according to PowerOutage.US.
Southeast Louisiana, southern Mississippi and southeast Alabama remained under a “particularly dangerous situation” tornado watch, reserved for the most serious twister threats, until 8 p.m. Central time Wednesday, the National Weather Service said.
The large and powerful storm that spawned the tornadoes Tuesday and Wednesday originated in California over the weekend and is lumbering across the Lower 48 states.
It has also generated blizzard conditions in the northern Rockies, northern Plains and parts of the Upper Midwest. It is next expected to bring ice and snow to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Thursday and Friday.
The National Weather Service received roughly two dozen reports of tornadoes in southern Louisiana and Mississippi on Wednesday, adding to the 26 reports it received in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi on Tuesday.
Two people died south of Shreveport, La., Tuesday when a tornado struck the town of Keithville. About two to three dozen houses in the community were damaged or destroyed, according to local officials.
To the northeast of Shreveport, another tornado injured two dozen when it hit the town of Farmerville.
On Wednesday morning, a tornado that tracked through New Iberia, La., about 20 miles southeast of Lafayette, damaged several homes and trapped several people, according to the local police department. Three people were taken to the hospital.
Tornado damage was also reported Wednesday afternoon in St. Tammany Parish, La., St. Charles Parish, La., Montz, La., Killona, La., Newton, Miss., Macedonia, Miss., and Mannassa, Miss.