Tornadoes Scour The South One Killed As ‘Super-High’ Winds Barrel Into Tennessee, Alabama

Tornadoes struck in at least six places in Alabama and Tennessee on Friday, ripping apart roofs, toppling power poles, flipping cars and uprooting a tree that killed a passing motorist.

“It was super-high winds and real noisy,” said Brian Clayon, a grocery sacker at a Food Lion in Smyrna, Tenn., that lost its facade and part of its roof. “I saw the funnel cloud go by, but nobody was hurt and that’s a miracle. Store buggies were flying around like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

Tornadoes touched down in four counties in the middle of Tennessee, emergency officials said. In Murfreesboro, a factory, car dealership, apartment complex and church were damaged.

Up to 100 homes in the South Ridge and Barfield communities just outside the city were damaged, as many as 40 of them severely.

About 30 families sought refuge at Red Cross shelters in Murfreesboro and in nearby Christiana, and more than 5,000 customers were without power Friday night as temperatures dropped to the mid-30s.

In Tuscaloosa, Ala., a motorist was killed when an uprooted tree landed on a moving car as one of two twisters moved through the area.

A tornado also overturned about 50 cars in the parking lot of a strip mall, collapsing a drug store’s roof and heavily damaging a grocery store. Smashed cars, tree limbs and other debris littered the area, but everyone there apparently escaped injury.

About 30 diners at a Chili’s restaurant waited out the storm in a cooler.

“I heard somebody yell and the doors blew open, so I ran outside and the wind blew my shirt up,” said Erskine Simmons, the restaurant’s manager. “I tried to turn around and run back in, but the wind was holding me back. Shingles were flying through the air, it was crazy.”

Much of northern Alabama and central Tennessee remained under a tornado watch Friday evening as the storms moved northeast.