More storms are possible as a cold front moves through the US, with tornado watches remaining across the country’s Southeast.
Parts of the United States were still under a tornado watch, and residents surveyed the extensive damage, as deadly storms killed at least 35 people in six states over the weekend.
National Weather Service meteorologist Cody Snell said tornado watches remained in effect Sunday morning for portions of the Carolinas, east Georgia and northern Florida. He said the main threat would be damaging winds, but there remains the possibility of more tornadoes.
“As we go through the day today, there still is the potential for severe weather from, say, the upper Ohio Valley and western Pennsylvania down through the rest of the mid-Atlantic and Southeast as we have this cold front that’s still moving across the country, and it won’t clear the East Coast until later on tonight,” Snell said.
Twenty-six tornadoes were reported but not confirmed to have touched down late Friday and early Saturday as a low-pressure system drove powerful thunderstorms across parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi and Missouri, said David Roth, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.
The dynamic storm earned an unusual “high risk” designation from weather forecasters. Still, experts said it’s not unusual to see such weather extremes in March.
At least 150,000 consumers have no power in the large, affected area, according to the website PowerOutage.com.
Missouri reported the largest number of deaths: 12 fatalities spanning five counties, the state’s highway patrol posted on X.
Robbie Myers, the director of emergency management in Missouri’s Butler County, told reporters that more than 500 homes, a church and a grocery store in the county were destroyed. A mobile home park had been “totally destroyed”, he said.
“Everything around it here is really bad. The trailer park up the street had fatalities. So, I mean, we don’t have nothing compared to anything like that. I still have a home. They don’t,” Rick Brittingham, a Missouri resident, told Reuters from Butler County.
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves posted on X that six deaths had been reported in the state – one in Covington County, two in Jefferson Davis County and three in Walthall County.
According to preliminary assessments, 29 people were injured statewide and 21 counties sustained storm damage, Reeves said.
In Arkansas, three deaths occurred, the state’s Department of Emergency Management said, adding that there were 32 injuries.
Eight deaths were confirmed in a crash involving more than 50 cars in Sherman County in Kansas, caused by a severe dust storm, the Kansas Highway Patrol said in a statement. Many injured travellers were taken to local hospitals.
At least three people were killed in central Alabama when multiple tornados swept across the state. Among those killed was an 82-year-old woman who was in a manufactured home that was destroyed by a twister, Dallas County Sheriff Michael Granthum said Sunday.
Crashes caused by dust storms near Amarillo, Texas, resulted in three deaths, according to the state’s Department of Public Safety.