A toddler and her mother were killed when a possible tornado flipped over a mobile home in Louisiana, authorities said on Sunday, as forecasters warned of a dangerous weather system that could bring hail and severe thunderstorms to parts of the U.S. South.
Neville Alexander, 3, and Francine Gotch, 38, were inside the mobile home in Breaux Bridge, outside Lafayette, when the storm slammed into the structure, causing “significant damage,” the St. Martin Sheriff’s Office said on its Facebook page.
Video posted on the page shows what appeared to be the remnants of a mobile home with its walls and roof collapsed and furniture and other household belongings upended and scattered. Nearby houses and vehicles appeared unscathed.
The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a rare “high risk” advisory for areas in northern Louisiana and eastern Texas, warning residents about the threat of severe weather. St. Martin Parish is in south-central Louisiana.
“Widespread severe thunderstorms capable of significant tornadoes, severe wind, and severe hail will spread across portions of east Texas to the lower Mississippi Valley through tonight,” a report from NWS reads. “The greatest risk for tornadoes will exist from portions of far east Texas eastward across northern Louisiana this afternoon and evening and then into central and southern Mississippi tonight.”
The storm system, also a concern for far southern Arkansas, was expected to track into Mississippi into the evening.
“After dark, the threat shifts eastward,” John Hart, a meteorologist at the NWS’s Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma, said by phone.
He urged residents in the affected areas to pay close attention to forecasts and tornado warnings, noting that Monday could bring more severe weather conditions into Alabama.
The warning comes after a severe weather system killed at least 21 people in the South earlier this year, many in mobile homes demolished by tornadoes in Georgia and Mississippi.
(Reuters reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Florida, and Frank McGurty in New York; Editing by Sandra Maler)
