Storms kill 21 across four states in US

WASHINGTON: Tornado-spawning thunderstorms that swept the US southern plains and Ozarks have killed at least 21 people as of Monday morning across four states and wrecked hundreds of buildings, with forecasters warning of more severe weather.

According to counts by state emergency agencies, the death toll during the Memorial Day weekend includes at least eight fatalities in Arkansas, seven in Texas, four in Kentucky, and two in Oklahoma.

Early on Monday, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear ordered a state of emergency, and the National Weather Service reported that a severe thunderstorm watch was in effect for portions of South Carolina and Georgia through at least Monday afternoon.

On the social media platform X on Monday, the governor of Kentucky stated, “It was a tough night for our people.” Afterwards, he declared that “devastating storms” had affected nearly the whole state during a press conference. Officials reported that the storms had damaged 100 state highways and roads.

530,000 customers left without power from

Arkansas up to West Virginia

Governor Greg Abbott announced at a press conference on Sunday that a strong tornado that devastated communities in north Texas near the Oklahoma border on Saturday night resulted in at least seven fatalities, including two children from a single family who were two and five years old. The tornado also caused almost 100 injuries.

According to the website Poweroutage.us, more than 530,000 consumers lacked electricity on Monday in states extending from Arkansas to West Virginia and south to Georgia. In the US, tornadoes are comparatively common, particularly in the south and center of the nation.

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas stated late on Sunday that the storms had resulted in at least eight deaths in the state.

When the lights went out, an Arkansas citizen with chronic obstructive lung disease passed away from a shortage of oxygen.

The weather on Monday caused power disruptions for hundreds of thousands of Americans, with over 180,000 outages in Kentucky alone, according to the tracking website Poweroutage.us.

The governor of Kentucky, Beshear, stated during a Monday news briefing that the restoration of electricity could take several days in some places.

Additional storms that were expected to produce destructive winds, big hail, more tornadoes, and torrential downpours that might cause flash floods were warned about by the National Weather Service as they moved across the Tennessee and Ohio valleys.

The most recent bout of severe weather occurred only a few days after a strong tornado devastated a hamlet in Iowa, killing four people, and more tornadoes made landfall in Texas last week.

Meanwhile, beginning on June 1, the US was bracing for what official forecasts described as a potentially “extraordinary” 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.

Weather system

The storm, which made landfall in the Southern Plains region late on Saturday, destroyed homes and flipped cars, leaving a path of devastation that claimed lives.

As the storms moved eastward over the US Memorial Day weekend, the National Weather Service warned that they may still cause damaging wind and hail, as well as possibly “isolated tornadoes” in the eastern Mid-Atlantic.

Beshear, who issued a state of emergency, stated that the storms had also “significantly damaged the power infrastructure” and warned that it might take days for full power to be restored.

In the Valley View neighborhood north of Dallas, the twister flipped cars over on an interstate highway and wrecked houses, a gas station, and other buildings, Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington told reporters. Sappington stated in an interview with The Weather Channel that the damage was “pretty extensive.” Storm chasers posted amazing videos of tornadoes smashing down trees and tearing off roofs, sparking electrical lines and launching branches and other debris skyward.

US