Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Twisters bring deaths, carnage to southern US

Wendy M. Welch, Doyle Rice and John Bacon in USA Today: At least 11 people were killed Monday after tornadoes ripped through Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, bringing the death toll from two days of vilent weather across a wide swath of the nation to at least 28. And the carnage may not be over yet, the National Weather Service warned Tuesday.

The massive, slow-moving storm system flattened homes and businesses, uprooted trees and flipped cars across parts of southern and central U.S. The National Weather Service was investigating reports of almost 100 tornadoes -- with more violent weather forecast for Tuesday.

Al least seven deaths were reported in Mississippi on Monday, six of them in and around Louisville. a town of about 6,600 people. State Sen. Giles Ward said he was huddled in a bathroom with his wife, four other family members and their dog Monday night as a tornado destroyed his two-story brick house and turned his son-in-law's SUV upside down onto the patio in Louisville.

"Our family is OK, thank goodness," Ward told The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson. "Our house as well as all the houses in our neighborhood it appears are destroyed. But our family is safe." Later, he texted: "I have never prayed so hard in my life. God is good. All we have lost is stuff."

More than 60 million people from southeastern Michigan to the central Gulf coast to the Carolinas and southern Virginia are at risk of severe storms and tornadoes Tuesday, according to AccuWeather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski....

NOAA stock image of an occluded mesocyclone tornado

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