August 18, 2009
Birmingham, Alabama
No comment by photographer
Claudette loses steam
By Leesha Faulkner
Selma Times-Journal
Published Monday, August 17, 2009
The first named tropical storm of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season hit land in Florida, then fizzled.
Tropical Storm Claudette formed as a tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida and Alabama with seemingly no warning late Saturday.
She gained enough strength by Sunday to become a tropical storm and rumbled toward land.
The National Weather Service in Birmingham issued several watches, including a tropical storm high wind watch for Dallas and other counties as Claudette slowly moved toward landfall.
“We thought she would move more in our direction,” said Rhonda Abbott, interim director of the Dallas County Emergency Management Agency. “But she shifted more toward the west and Mississippi....
