A powerful storm system sweeping across the central U.S. has left at least three people dead, toppled trees and power lines, and knocked out electricity for hundreds of thousands as damaging winds and tornadoes pummeled communities from Michigan to Louisiana.
Why It Matters
Storms triggered more than 70 tornado warnings and over 400 severe weather reports across multiple states, according to Fox Weather. High winds, large hail, and flash flooding contributed to the destruction.
Chad Livengood/Detroit News via AP
What To Know
In Valparaiso, Indiana, a truck driver died after his tractor-trailer was blown over by 80 mph gusts, according to ABC7. Another fatality was reported in Millersburg, Indiana, when a thunderstorm overturned an Amish buggy at a highway intersection.
The storms produced confirmed tornadoes in at least seven states— Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee—on Sunday, CNN reported.
In McEwen, Tennessee, about 50 miles west of Nashville, a tornado tore the roof off a house and trapped residents inside. They were later rescued without injuries, according to CNN affiliate WSMV.
In Oklahoma’s Cherokee County, another casualty occurred when a tree crushed a trailer near the Illinois River, killing a man inside, officials told CNN affiliate KJRH.
More than 400,000 customers lost power Monday morning, CNN said, with the majority of outages concentrated in Michigan.
Footage and images has begun to surface on social media since the storms hit.
A photo taken in Michigan, one of the hardest hit states, showed a collapsed tree covering a yard.
In one video posted to Instagram, a funnel cloud could be seen reaching down to the earth as it dominated the skyline, though the location of the video was not specified. “Gusts of cold wind felt like it was pulling us toward it,” said the user who posted the video in the comments.
In Tennessee, a video shared online by a storm chaser showed a dust devil sweeping across a highway.
And an image shared in response showed a wall cloud filling the sky southwest of Newport, near Pleasant Plains.
What People Are Saying
AccuWeather meteorologist Alex DaSilva told Newsweek: “While storms reports are still coming in, it appears that the hardest hit areas yesterday afternoon and overnight were from northern Arkansas to southern Michigan.
“There were a few tornado reports in these areas as well, however the majority of the storm reports were hail and damaging winds. There were several reports of over 2-inch diameter hail in Missouri and in Arkansas. There were several wind reports of over 70 mph in Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. The highest gust I found was 96 mph at the Jackson County-Reynolds Field Airport in Michigan.”
What Happens Next
DaSilva said the storm threat will shift east today along the East Coast States from northern Florida up to portions of New England, and that the main threats would be hail, flooding, damaging winds and isolated tornadoes.