NEW ORLEANS — A very strong line of storms burst across southeast Louisiana very early Tuesday, signaling their presence by causing phone alerts and some warning sirens to go off.
In St. Charles Parish, the emergency operations center activated its tornado sirens around 12:45am.
There was a tornado warning that impacted the Northwest portion of the parish, along with St. John Parish.
A viewer from St. Charles Parish told WWL Louisiana that she lost her fence to the strong winds.
The line, the second one as part of the cool front moving across the state, spawned tornado warnings, flood warnings and severe thunderstorm warnings.
About 7,000 buildings in Orleans were without power at 2 a.m., according to the Entergy outage map. Another 1,300 were without power in Tangipahoa.
An earlier round of storms that blew through on Monday afternoon, caused possible tornado damage in Assumption Parish.
In addition, the Causeway closed for a little under an hour as some strong, lightning-filled storms made their way. The closure of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway Bridge was lifted shortly before 6 p.m.
Southeast Louisiana was in a fairly rare situation of a level three chance of severe weather with an enhanced "hatching" aspect for possible tornadic development.
Nearly every school system dismissed students by midday.
Tune in to WWL Louisiana for the latest severe weather coverage.