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Gordon, never a hurricane, killed child in mobile home

A flooded parking lot sits near a shutdown portion of US Highway 98 from Tropical Storm Gordon on Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2018, in Spanish Fort, Ala. Tropical Storm Gordon never became a hurricane but it was deadly all the same, as it made landfall late Tuesday just west of the Alabama-Mississippi border. (AP Photo/Dan Anderson)

DAUPHIN ISLAND, Alabama — Tropical Storm Gordon never became a hurricane but it was deadly all the same, killing a child by blowing a tree onto a mobile home as it made landfall. The storm later weakened into a depression, dumping heavy rains across southern states.

The National Hurricane Center said Gordon was weakening on a path into Arkansas after striking the coast at 70 mph, just shy of hurricane strength, near Pascagoula, Mississippi. The remnants will likely cause flash flooding across parts of seven states and as far north as Iowa in the coming days.

The storm was going out swinging: Forecasters said radar spotted possible tornadoes spun off by the storm overnight in southern Alabama and the Florida panhandle, and more were possible through tonight in Mississippi and western Alabama.

Driftwood and other debris on the causeway made for hazardous driving early today to Dauphin Island, Alabama, which was partly flooded by seawater overnight, leaving people to drive over sand and around lawn furniture on the main road in the wake of the storm. Siding was peeled off some houses, but Mayor Jeff Collier said “for the most part, we did OK.”

The center predicted total rain amounts of 4-8 inches in the Florida panhandle and parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa and Illinois. Rainfall could be even more intense in isolated places, dropping up to 12 inches through early Saturday.

A storm surge covered barrier islands as the storm blew through, and some inland roadways were flooded as well. The National Weather Service in Mobile cautioned that the Styx River near Elsanor, Alabama, could reach moderate, and possibly major, flood stage later today.

But the storm’s impact could have been worse: Gordon gave only a glancing blow to New Orleans, where Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city now has “the pumps and the power” needed to protect residents inside the levee protection system.

There were no immediate injury or significant damage reports, other than the tree that fell on the mobile home in Pensacola. The Escambia County Sheriff’s office posted on its Facebook page that responding deputies discovered that the child had been killed. The name and age were not released.

More than 27,000 customers were without power as Gordon began pushing ashore, mostly in coastal Alabama and the western tip of the Florida Panhandle around Pensacola, with a few hundred in southeastern Mississippi. Crews were already restoring electricity early today.

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