Alabama Emergency Management Agency officials received an early wake-up call and were notified that Hurricane Juliet had made landfall at about 2 a.m. near Pascagoula, Miss.
Hurricane Juliet was not real, but it gave EMA local officials and the National Weather Service a chance Tuesday to practice what they would do in the event of a real category 3 storm.
Most of the exercise took place at EMA headquarters in Clanton.
National Weather Service meteorologist John DeBlock says the storm would likely have caused high winds, flooding and structural damage in south Alabama. The executive operations officer for the Alabama EMA, Jeff Byard, says the purpose of the exercise was to make sure Alabama officials were prepared for such a storm and were unified in their response.