<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">A giant, swirling storm system billowing across the South on Thursday killed at least six people in central Alabama, where a tornado ripped roofs off homes and uprooted trees in historic Selma, while another person was killed in Georgia, where severe winds knocked out power to tens of thousands of people.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Autauga County, Alabama, 41 miles (66 kilometers) northeast of Selma, at least six fatalities were confirmed and an estimated 40 homes were damaged or destroyed by a tornado that cut a 20-mile (32-kilometer) path across two rural communities, said Ernie Baggett, the county’s emergency management director.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Several mobile homes were launched into the air and at least 12 people were injured severely enough to be taken to hospitals by emergency responders, Baggett told The Associated Press. He said crews were focused Thursday night on cutting through downed trees to look for people who may need help.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“It really did a good bit of damage. This is the worst that I’ve seen here in this county,” Baggett said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Georgia, a passenger died when a tree fell on a vehicle in Jackson during the storm, Butts County Coroner Lacey Prue said. In the same county southeast of Atlanta, the storm appeared to have knocked a freight train off its tracks, officials said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Officials in Griffin, south of Atlanta, told local news outlets that multiple people had been trapped inside an apartment complex after trees fell on it. Firefighters also cut a Griffin man loose who had been pinned for hours under a tree that fell on his house. A high school was damaged, and students were held at four middle schools for parents to pick up after officials determined it was unsafe to run buses. The city of Griffin imposed a curfew from 10 p.m. Thursday to 6 a.m. Friday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">School systems in at least six Georgia counties on the southern fringes of metro Atlanta canceled classes on Friday. Those systems enroll a total of 90,000 students.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nationwide, there were 33 separate tornado reports Thursday from the National Weather Service as of Thursday evening, with a handful of tornado warnings still in effect in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. However, the reports were not yet confirmed and some of them could later be classified as wind damage after assessments are done in coming days.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Selma, a city etched in the history of the civil rights movement, a tornado cut a wide path through the downtown area, where brick buildings collapsed, oak trees were uprooted, cars were on their side and power lines were left dangling. Plumes of thick, black smoke rose over the city from a fire burning.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It wasn't immediately known whether the storm caused the blaze. Selma Mayor James Perkins said no fatalities have been reported, but several people were seriously injured. First responders were continuing to assess the damage and officials hoped to get an aerial view of the city Friday morning.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“We have a lot of downed power lines," he said. "There is a lot of danger on the streets.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With widespread power outages, the Selma City Council held a meeting on the sidewalk, using lights from cellphones, to declare a state of emergency. A high school was opened as a shelter, officials said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mattie Moore was among Selma residents who picked up boxed meals offered by a charity downtown.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Thank God that we’re here. It’s like something you see on TV,” Moore said of all the destruction.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A city of about 18,000 people, Selma is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of the Alabama capital of Montgomery. It was a flashpoint of the civil rights movement and where Alabama state troopers viciously attacked Black people advocating for voting rights as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After the tornado passed, Krishun Moore emerged from her home to the sound of children crying and screaming. She and her mother encouraged the kids to keep screaming until they found the two of them on top of the roof of a damaged apartment. She estimated the kids were about 1 and 4 years old. Both of them are OK, she said through Facebook messenger.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Malesha McVay drove parallel to the tornado with her family. She said it got less than a mile (less than 2 kilometers) from her home before suddenly turning.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“We stopped and we prayed. We followed it and prayed,” she said. “It was a 100% God thing that it turned right before it hit my house.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">She took video of the giant twister, which would turn black as it swept away home after home.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“It would hit a house, and black smoke would swirl up,” she said. “It was very terrifying.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">About 40,000 customers were without power in Alabama on Thursday night, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide. In Georgia, about 86,000 customers were without electricity after the storm system carved a path across a tier of counties just south of Atlanta.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The storm hit in Griffin, south of Atlanta, with winds damaging a shopping area, local news outlets reported. A Hobby Lobby store partially lost its roof, and at least one car was flipped in the parking lot of a nearby Walmart.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Damage was also reported west of downtown Atlanta in Douglas County and Cobb County, with Cobb County government posting a damage report showing a crumbled cinder block wall at a warehouse in suburban Austell.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Kentucky, the National Weather Service in Louisville confirmed that an EF-1 tornado struck Mercer County and said crews were surveying damage in a handful of other counties.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Three factors — a natural La Nina weather cycle, warming of the Gulf of Mexico likely related to climate change and a decades-long shift of tornadoes from the west to east — came together to make Thursday’s tornado outbreak unusual and damaging, said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University who studies tornado trends.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The La Nina, a cooling of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide, was a factor in making a wavy jet stream that brought a cold front through, Gensini said. But that’s not enough for a tornado outbreak. What’s needed is moisture.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Normally the air in the Southeast is fairly dry this time of year but the dew point was twice what is normal, likely because of unusually warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, which is likely influenced by climate change. That moisture hit the cold front and everything was in place, Gensini said. AP/UNB</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>