PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Sally lumbered ashore in Alabama with 105 mph winds today, shoving a surge of seawater onto the coast and bringing torrential rain that forecasters warned will cause dangerous flooding from the Florida Panhandle to Mississippi and well inland in the days ahead.
Moving at an agonizingly slow 3 mph, the storm made landfall at 4:45 a.m. near Gulf Shores after raking the Gulf Coast with hurricane-force winds and rain from Pensacola Beach, Florida, westward to Dauphin Island, Alabama, for hours.
Emergency officials in Alabama and Florida reported flash floods that pushed water into people’s home. More than 2 feet of rain was recorded near Naval Air Station Pensacola, and forecasters said some coastal spots could get nearly 3 feet.
“It’s not common that you start measuring rainfall in feet,” said National Weather Service forecaster David Eversole in Mobile, Alabama. “Sally’s moving so slowly, so it just keeps pounding and pounding and pounding the area with tropical rain and just powerful winds. It’s just a nightmare.”
Street lights were knocked out in downtown Mobile, where a stoplight snapped, swinging wildly on its cable. Trees were bent over as the rain blew sideways in the howling wind. In downtown Pensacola, car alarms went off, the flashing lights illuminating the floodwaters surrounding parked cars.
Nearly a half-million homes and businesses had lost electricity by early today, according to the poweroutage.us site. A curfew was imposed in Gulf Shores hours before the storm’s arrival. Florida officials shut down a section of Interstate 10 near Pensacola because of high winds.
West Coast ablaze
Touring wildfire damage Tuesday in her home state, California Sen. Kamala Harris said “ideology should not kick in” when responding to wildfires and the climate crisis, a veiled criticism of President Donald Trump, though she did not say his name.
Harris spoke in front of a charred elementary school playground in the small foothill community of Auberry as ash fell from the sky and a thick smell of smoke hung in the air. Harris was joined by Gov. Gavin Newsom in her first trip to California as the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
It followed a Monday visit from Trump, who touched down for a briefing on the fires near Sacramento. He rejected the scientific consensus that climate change is exacerbating California’s wildfires. He has repeatedly sparred with Newsom over the state’s response to the fires, but he has never made good on his threats to withhold federal disaster funding.
“The people who are victimized by these, they could care less and their children could care less who they voted for in the last election. This is not a partisan issue,” Harris told reporters.
California has already set a record with more than 3 million acres burned so far this year.
The small community where Harris spoke is within the Sierra National Forest, where a fast-moving wildfire was sparked over Labor Day weekend. State fire and forest officials described the status of the fire to Harris and Newsom before they addressed reporters. Dean Gould, the forest supervisor, told Newsom and Harris that he’d never seen such an aggressive fire in the area.
The two then briefly walked around a burned-out property where a charred truck, a washer and dryer, and a brick chimney remained standing. Harris said such chimneys remind her of tombstones.
