Mississippi town seen in photos before and after tornado

Hair-raising satellite images exposed the scale of devastation in Mississippi after a deadly tornado ripped through Rolling Fork Friday, sowing death and destruction in its wake.

At least 26 people were killed and dozens were injured in Mississippi and Alabama when a monster storm, preliminarily rated as an EF-4 tornado, descended on the region.

Rolling Fork — a predominantly black community of 2,000 residents located in one of the poorest counties in Mississippi — was among the hardest hit by the natural disaster, as seen in satellite images released by the space tech company Maxar Sunday.

The striking before-and-after shots compare multiple locations throughout Rolling Fork from Dec. 27, 2022, and March 26, 2023.

Winds between 166 and 200 mph uprooted trees, flattened houses, sheared roofs off buildings and scattered mobile homes.

Images captured from space show how entire neighborhoods in Rolling Fork were turned in less than an hour into fields of debris, dotted with mounds of twisted construction materials where homes had once stood.

The storm obliterated the Rolling Fork Visitors Center & Museum and badly damaged Rolling Fork Elementary School by stripping a part of its roof.

Life-threatening winds snapped the town’s water tower in half like a toothpick, and battered the town’s post office and county clerk office on Walnut Street.

Multiple warehouses and businesses in town were also reduced to little more than piles of debris, surrounded by overturned cars.

Speaking to CNN, Sharkey County District 1 Supervisor Bill Newsom likened the situation on the ground to a “battle zone.”

“Everyone is affected. Entire subdivisions and neighborhoods … some are just wiped away, they’re just not even there,” Newsom said.

The EF-4 tornado struck so quickly that the sheriff’s department hardly had time to set off sirens to alert the population, according to Rolling Fork Mayor Eldridge Walker.

The twister tore across Mississippi for about 59 miles over more than one hour, the National Weather Service said in a preliminary report. The storm was an estimated three-quarters of a mile wide at some points.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said 25 people were confirmed killed in Mississippi, 55 people were injured and 2,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.

A man was also killed in Alabama when his trailer home flipped over several times.

President Biden issued an emergency declaration for Mississippi early Sunday, making federal funding available to hardest hit areas in Carroll, Humphreys, Monroe and Sharkey counties.

As post-tornado cleanup continued Monday in communities across the southeastern region, the National Weather Service issued a warning about severe thunderstorms threatening parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Northern Florida.

The weather system was expected to bring strong gusts wind of 60-70 mph, large hail and even possible tornadoes in central Georgia through Tuesday afternoon.

With Post wires