Floods soak South as blizzard targets central U.S.

Unseasonably warm weather helped fuel more storms and floods across the South on Christmas Day. A separate system is forecast to bring snow and ice to the Texas Panhandle, New Mexico and Kansas over the weekend.

Drenching rain on Christmas Day led to flash floods across Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Mississippi, where residents were still recovering from tornadoes and severe storms that left 14 people dead Wednesday and Thursday.

A tornado also reportedly touched down in Jefferson County, Alabama, including through the southwest portion of Birmingham, the state’s largest city, the Associated Press reported.

Lt. Sean Edwards, a Birmingham police spokesman, told the AP that trees are down and people were trapped inside damaged houses, adding that several people were taken to hospitals for treatment of minor injuries. Further details were not immediately available.

The flooding was exacerbated by ground already saturated from recent storms, the National Weather Service said. Friday's storms hit areas where Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant had issued a state of emergency Thursday following the tornadoes.

There were also overnight reports of a tornado in Georgia and several reports of twisters in California’s Central Valley.

The weekend storm will target the central United States. Eastern New Mexico will be hit with snow Saturday and Sunday. The Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, plus southwestern Kansas could see snow from Saturday night into Monday, according to AccuWeather.

Albuquerque, Amarillo and Lubbock, Texas, are all in the potential blizzard zone; more than a foot of snow is expected, AccuWeather said.

Ice could also create travel headaches Sunday into Monday from west-central Texas to central Oklahoma, central Kansas, southeastern Nebraska and southwestern Iowa.

Severe thunderstorms and heavy rain are likely  in eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas, north-central Texas and Louisiana on Saturday, where more flooding is possible, according to the National Weather Service.

The snow and winter weather in the central states this weekend then moves toward the Eastern Tennessee Valley early next week, followed by cooling temperatures that should bring more normal weather to the South and Northeast by midweek, Storm Prediction Center forecaster Corey Mead said.