By AccuWeather staff writer
Three people were discovered deceased in a submerged vehicle on Thursday morning following Tuesday's storms. (Facebook/Tuscaloosa Police Department)
Three people were found deceased in a submerged vehicle in Holt, Alabama, on Thursday as floodwaters from Tuesday night's storm receded, the Tuscaloosa Police Department said in a statement over Facebook.
Officials have only identified the three victims to the public as a man, 72, and two women, 53 and 42. The SUV they were found in was discovered around 8 a.m. CDT, and the Tuscaloosa VCU believes the vehicle became disabled and sank the floodwaters following the storm, according to the statement.
These three deaths raise the death toll associated with the storm to at least five, including the two deaths associated with tornadoes in Texas and Louisiana, respectively.
Three people were discovered deceased in a submerged vehicle on Thursday morning following Tuesday's storms. (Facebook/Tuscaloosa Police Department)
Severe weather rolled through the state Tuesday following its destruction across other south-central states. The storms began brewing in Texas on Monday, March 21, before charging eastward and spawning over 50 confirmed tornadoes across multiple states through Tuesday. The tornado in Elgin, Texas, in particular, made headlines after a storm chaser filmed it picking up and tossing around a red pickup truck before the motorist was able to safely drive away. As the storms continued their trek on Tuesday, two tornadoes touched down in southeastern Louisiana -- one EF3 tornado that tracked near Arabi, a suburb of New Orleans, and an EF1 tornado that tracked north of New Orleans in the community of Lacombe.
Confirmed tornadoes from March 21- March 22 as of March 25, 2022
Radar recordings from Tuesday evening showed the same line of storms moving slowly across central Alabama, including Tuscaloosa County, the sluggish pace increasing the threat of flash flooding.
"Due to the relatively slow movement of the line, flooding could become more of an issue," the National Weather Service office in Birmingham, Alabama, warned over Twitter around 6:30 p.m. CDT. Tuscaloosa was already under a flood advisory at the time, with a severe thunderstorm warning issued for the central portion of the county following not long after.
Birmingham broke a daily rainfall record on Tuesday after receiving 2.32 inches of rain. The old record had been set back in 1908 when the city had measured 2.32 inches of rain. Tuscaloosa also saw rainfall records fall as it received 3.56 inches of rain Tuesday, far surpassing the 2012 rainfall record of 1.1 inches.
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A flash flood warning for the county was issued shortly before 7:45 p.m. CDT, which was later extended for the northwestern part of the county and downtown Tuscaloosa.
Video footage from Tuesday showed intense flooding at Twomile Creek on Hunter Creek Road in Northport, a town in Tuscaloosa County that's a little over five miles west of Holt. The floodwaters had transformed the road into rapids, and another video showed more flooding in Northport near Willowbrook Trailer Park. Floodwater lapped at the foundation of mobile homes, orange traffic cones blocking off the already inundated road.
There were later reports of water rescues in Hoover, located in the neighboring county of Shelby, along Highway 31.
"Between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., the Alabaster Shelby County Airport measured 0.49 inches of rain in 6 minutes, which would equate to nearly 5 inches per hour. These kind of rainfall rates in this area are what one would expect to occur every 1,000 or more years," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Bob Smerbeck said, citing the NOAA Atlas 14 Point Precipitation Frequency Estimates.
The rain began to taper off on Wednesday, giving way to drier weather that is expected to last through the first part of the oncoming week before wet weather returns once more.
"There will be a gusty breeze on Saturday and the entire weekend will be on the cool side," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist John Gresiak said. "Monday and Tuesday will turn warmer as the dry weather continues. Another round of storms, potentially severe, is expected from Wednesday afternoon through Thursday."
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