TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Powerful storms packing hurricane-force winds killed at least one woman Friday in Florida as a week of deadly severe weather continued in the South, where uprooted trees crashed onto homes and knocked out electricity to thousands in several states.

City officials in Tallahassee said wind gusts of 80 to 100 mph, speeds that exceed hurricane intensity, were reported in Florida’s capital city. Images posted on social media showed mangled metal and other debris from damaged buildings littering some areas.

A statement on the Tallahassee government’s website said crews were scrambling to repair 100 broken power poles while half the homes and businesses were left without electricity in a city of 200,000 people.

It said the National Weather Service was assessing paths of three potential tornadoes.

“Our area experienced catastrophic wind damage,” Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey said on the social platform X.

The sheriff’s office for Leon County, which includes Tallahassee, said in a Facebook post Friday that a woman was killed when a tree fell onto her family’s home.

The storm that struck Tallahassee early Friday also knocked two chimneys from apartment buildings at a complex where fallen trees covered a row of cars. Fencing was left bent at the baseball stadium of Florida State University, where classes were canceled Friday.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on social media Friday that the state Division of Emergency Management was working with local officials to “do everything possible to return life to normalcy for our residents as quickly as possible.”

The woman killed in Florida was at least the fourth death caused by severe weather in the Southeast this week. Storms were blamed for killing two people in Tennessee on Wednesday, when another storm death was reported in North Carolina.

Nearly 230,000 homes and businesses from Mississippi to North Carolina were blacked out Friday, according to the website poweroutage.us. Most of those outages were in Florida, where power was out for nearly 160,000 customers.

In Mississippi’s capital city, Jackson, authorities urged residents Friday to conserve and boil water as a precaution after a power outage at one of its major water treatment plants.

JXN Water, the local water utility, said customers could expect reduced water pressure as workers assessed damage from overnight storms. “It will take many hours for the system to recover, and some places may take longer,” said Ted Henifin, the water system’s manager.

Other parts of the South were cleaning up from storm damage inflicted earlier in the week.

In the farming community of Vidalia, Georgia, and surrounding Toombs County, officials said a tornado left a path of destruction roughly 2 miles long Thursday.

About 10 houses had trees crash onto or through their roofs, and crews worked to remove 50 downed trees that were blocking roads, said Lynn Moore, emergency management director for Toombs County.