MOBILE, Ala. (AP) -- Twisters hopscotched across the Deep South, and, along with brutal, straight-line winds, knocked down countless trees, blew the roofs off homes and left many Christmas celebrations in the dark. Holiday travelers in the nation's much colder midsection battled treacherous driving conditions from freezing rain and blizzard conditions from the same fast-moving storms.
As predicted, conditions were volatile throughout the day and into the night with tornado warnings still out for some parts of Alabama, Florida and Georgia. The storms were blamed for three deaths, several injuries, and left homes from Louisiana to Alabama damaged.
In Mobile, Ala., a tornado or high winds damaged homes, a high school and church, and knocked down power lines and large tree limbs in an area just west of downtown around nightfall. WALA-TV's tower camera captured the image of a large funnel cloud headed toward downtown.
Rick Cauley, his wife, Ashley, and two children were hosting members of both of their families. When the sirens went off, the family headed down the block to take shelter at the athletic field house at Mobile's Murphy High School.
"As luck would have it, that's where the tornado hit," Cauley said. "The pressure dropped and the ears started popping and it got crazy for a second." They were all fine, though the school was damaged. Hours after the storm hit, officials reported no serious injuries in the southwestern Alabama city.
The storm system with heavy rains moved into Georgia early Wednesday and expected to hit the Carolinas with severe weather as well.
Meanwhile, blizzard conditions hit the nation's midsection.
Earlier in the day, winds toppled a tree onto a pickup truck in the Houston area, killing the driver, and a 53-year-old north Louisiana man was killed when a tree fell on his house. Icy roads already were blamed for a 21-vehicle pileup in Oklahoma, and the Highway Patrol there says a 28-year-old woman was killed in a crash on a snowy U.S. Highway near Fairview.
The snowstorm that caused numerous accidents pushed out of Oklahoma late Tuesday, carrying with it blizzard warnings for parts of northeast Arkansas, where 10 inches of snow was forecast. Freezing rain clung to trees and utility lines in Arkansas and winds gusts up to 30 mph whipped them around, causing about 71,000 customers to lose electricity for a time.
Blizzard conditions were possible for parts of Illinois, Indiana and western Kentucky with predictions of 4 to 7 inches of snow.
A tornado struck a mobile home park near the municipal airport at Troy, Ala., trapping a man in the wreckage of a trailer, said Thomas Johnston of the Pike County Emergency Management Agency. Rescue workers freed the person, who wasn't hurt badly, and no other serious injuries were reported, he said.
An apparent tornado also caused damage in Grove Hill, about 80 miles north of Mobile.
Mary Cartright said she was working at the Fast Track convenience store in the town on Christmas evening when the wind started howling and the lights flickered, knocking out the store's computerized cash registers.
"Our cash registers are down so our doors are closed," said Cartright in a phone interview.
Trees fell on a few houses in central Louisiana's Rapides Parish, but there were no injuries reported, said sheriff's Lt. Tommy Carnline. Near McNeill, Miss., a likely tornado damaged a dozen homes and sent eight people to the hospital, none with life-threatening injuries, said Pearl River County emergency management agency director Danny Manley.
Gov. Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency in the state, saying eight counties have reported damages and some injuries.
Fog blanketed highways, including arteries in the Atlanta area, which was expected to be dealing with the same storm system on Wednesday. In New Mexico, drivers across the eastern plains had to fight through snow, ice and low visibility.
At least three tornadoes were reported in Texas, though only one building was damaged, according to the National Weather Service.
More than 500 flights nationwide were canceled by the evening, according to the flight tracker FlightAware.com. More than half were canceled into and out of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport that got a few inches of snow.
Christmas lights also were knocked out with more than 100,000 customers without power for at least a time in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.
In Louisiana, quarter-sized hail was reported early Tuesday in the western part of the state and a WDSU viewer sent a photo to the TV station of what appeared to be a waterspout around the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in New Orleans. There were no reports of crashes or damage.
Some mountainous areas of Arkansas' Ozark Mountains could get up to 10 inches of snow, which would make travel "very hazardous or impossible" in the northern tier of the state from near whiteout conditions, the weather service said.
The holiday may conjure visions of snow and ice, but twisters this time of year are not unheard of. Ten storm systems in the last 50 years have spawned at least one Christmastime tornado with winds of 113 mph or more in the South, said Chris Vaccaro, a National Weather Service spokesman in Washington, via email.
The most lethal were the storms of Dec. 24-26, 1982, when 29 tornadoes in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi killed three people and injured 32.
In Mobile, a large section of the roof on the Trinity Episcopal Church is missing and the front wall of the parish wall is gone, said Scott Rye, a senior warden at the church in the Midtown section of the city.
On Christmas Eve, the church with about 500 members was crowded for services.
"Thank God this didn't happen last night," Rye said.
The church finished a $1 million-plus renovation campaign in June 2011, which required the closure of the historic sanctuary for more than a year.
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Associated Press writers Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala., Jeff Amy in Atlanta, Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston, Chuck Bartels in Little Rock, Ark., and AP Business Writer Daniel Wagner in Washington, contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/christmas-day-storms-blamed-3-032145273.html
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The first thing you need to figure out is whether your boss is a bad manager or a bad person. The former implies that he doesn't give you the direction, priorities, and guidance you need to succeed at your job. The latter is a highly subjective way of saying the two of you don't see eye-to-eye for personal reasons. If your boss is just a bad manager, you can functionally compensate for their issues with planning and structure. If your issue with your boss is one of personality, your job will require some perspective-checking on your part. Still, there are ways through both problems, but you're not going to make any headway at all if you're not clear on which issue you're facing. Photo by Istvan Hajas (Shutterstock).
In the military, you don't get to choose your boss. You don't even get to just quit when you run up against someone you don't really like working for. You have to adapt, adjust, and find a way to figure out your differences and move on. Granted, working in a corporate IT department or helping customers on the sales floor isn't the same as being in the service, but you can take a few cues from our friends in uniform. Remember, you're not at work to make friends. It can be great to make friends at work, and you should try if you can, but you need to separate whether you like your boss from whether you can learn to respect their position. Photo by Tom Wang (Shutterstock).
Even if your job sucks, that doesn't mean you can't fix it. Let's start with ways you can manage yourself. Whether your issues with your boss are personal or professional, you can benefit from some simple coping mechanisms that will help you deal with a bad boss on your own. Photo by bottled_void.
Find a mentor, or another manager you can look up to. A mentor, even a manager in another department, can often help you understand your boss's pressures and challenges in a non-threatening way. They may be willing to level with you in a way your boss isn't. Plus, while you may not be able to tell them everything, the whole point of having a mentor is to help you learn, grow, and develop your skills?which include working with difficult people. Photo by Huntstock (Shutterstock).
Now that you have some tools to work on yourself, it's time to work on your boss and peel back some of those layers that you hate. With luck, you'll find something you can work with. Here are some suggestions to help.
Don't just be an employee, be your boss' assistant. Use your one-on-one time with your manager to discuss upcoming priorities as well. Don't leave any excuse for you to not know what your boss is working on, or what rumors or rumblings your boss may be privy to that will have an effect on your workload. We're big fans of the weekly review. Bring your boss in on it as well, or schedule one just for the two of you. If you have a small team, suggest to your boss that you all spend a short time each week clarifying priorities and talking about what's on everyone's shared plates. Doing so will get your boss communicating with you in a group setting, and take some of the sting out of their poor managerial skills. Photo by Riza Nugraha.
If nothing else works, quit. Sometimes all of the common ground, shared priorities, coping mechanisms, and de-stressing techniques can't heal the rift between you and a bad boss. That said, don't just quit at the first sign. It's easy to say "your boss sucks, get out of there" when you're good at being employed, or if you're someone who's already employed talking to someone who loves their job but hates their manager. Sometimes it's worth it to try and work it out, and working it out takes effort and time. Give it a try first. Photo by Carey Ciuro.