Severe storms in Georgia and other Southeast US states leave 1 dead and cause widespread power outages

A huge tree on Old St. Augustine Road rests on downed power lines in Tallahassee, Fla., Friday, May 10, 2024. Powerful storms with damaging high winds threatened several states in the Southeast early Friday. (AP Photo/Phil Sears)

A weather system that produced severe thunderstorms late into the night in the Southeast left one man dead in Georgia, caused damage in a South Carolina town and left hundreds of thousands of electricity customers without power for a time.

The 27-year-old man was found dead after a tree fell Tuesday on his moving car on a residential road in the suburban county northwest of Atlanta, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office said. No passengers were inside.

Power outages in southeastern Tennessee and northern Georgia had declined to about 30,000 by Wednesday morning, down from more than 200,000 in Georgia alone. Wednesday’s remaining outages were most concentrated around the town of Ellijay in the north Georgia mountains.