Photo taken from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website.The National Weather Service is tracking a tornado nine miles Southeast of Bridgeport, Ala. According to radar, the twister is moving northeast at 60 miles per hour.
Southern Hamilton, Bradley and Marion counties and the Hixson area are under a tornado warning until 9:30 a.m.
Late Tuesday, the cold front behind the local warnings already had edged into a storm system that has dumped historic rain on the Mississippi River region and dropped a killer tornado on the town of Vilonia, Ark., north of Little Rock. The twister killed four people, and four others died in nearby floods. In Mississippi, a 3-year-old girl was killed when a storm knocked a tree onto her home.
Authorities said the storms would continue to fire up and move eastward through the night and today, with the cold front provided the extra energy that may produce tornadoes.
On Tuesday, Don Allen, director of Hamilton County Emergency Management, reminded the group of emergency workers about the most recent storm to cause local tornado damage.