Storm Francine races across US South, slamming region with rain and wind | U.S. & World [Video]

By Ned Randolph

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) -Storm Francine barreled across the U.S. South on Thursday, pounding the region with heavy rains and gusty winds while causing widespread power outages for hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.

It had weakened from a Category 2 hurricane to a tropical depression as it moved northeastward over central Mississippi, but still packed winds of 35 miles per hour (55 km per hour) and threatened areas with dangerous storm surges early on Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said in an advisory.

It was expected to weaken further and become a post-tropical cyclone later in the day, the center added.

In the low-lying, coastal Louisiana city of Houma in Terrebonne Parish, where the storm made landfall on Wednesday evening with winds near 100 mph (160 kph), Christine Bundy, 72, was hooking up a new generator she had just bought.

“A Cat. 2 is nothing,” she told Reuters by …