Hurricane Zeta crossed Alabama overnight, leaving a diagonal path of fallen trees and households without power in its wake.
No Alabamian has yet been reported as having died or suffered a critical injury due to the storm, though many minor injuries have been reported in local outlets.
LifeSouth has put out a call for blood donors to donate, saying Hurricane Zeta has made a national shortage of blood even worse.
Pictures of impassable roads and homes damaged homes were shared on social media by many in the state on Thursday morning.
As such, dozens of school systems have delayed or canceled school for Thursday, and in some harder-hit areas for Friday as well.
Zeta was an unusually fast-moving storm and made landfall as a Category 2 hurricane, stronger than analysts predicted earlier in the week.
Sean Sullivan, a talk radio host who lives in the Mobile area, tweeted an image of a road in his area.
John Sharp, a reporter for Alabama Media Group, posted images to Twitter that indicated several trees and power lines were down near Citronelle, Alabama.
The Alabama Power Company advises, “If you see downed lines, avoid them.”
Citizens can report downed lines to their local authorities, or they can call Alabama Power at 1-800-888-2726 to report a downed line.
As of 10:37 a.m. around 500,000 customers in Alabama remained without power, according to Poweroutages.us, a website that tracks power outages.
Some small providers do not report their outages to the website, so the totals it shows should not be considered definitive.
The graphic provided by the site of which counties have the most outages shows the path of the storm through Alabama.
The number of customers without power is changing rapidly as numerous crews are working to restore power.
Update 3:20 p.m.
Poweroutages.us currently reports over 417,000 customers in Alabama remain without power.
Director Brian Hastings of the Alabama Emergency Management Agency has confirmed one person in Clarke County has died due to the storm.
Henry Thornton is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can contact him by email: henry@new-yhn.local or on Twitter @HenryThornton95
