by Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Chief International Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – Some 100 million Americans have been impacted by violent tornadoes ripping through parts of the United States, wiping out schools and toppling semitractor-trailers in several states, part of a monster storm that has killed at least 35 people, authorities said.
By Sunday, there was vast destruction from a massive storm system sweeping across the United States, spreading farther east overnight, with reports of violent tornadoes and severe weather that hammered Alabama.
Parts of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia were under tornado watches until Sunday afternoon.
The Storm Prediction Center warned of the threat of tornadoes, damaging wind gusts, and hail.
By early Sunday, the number of fatalities increased after the Kansas Highway Patrol reported eight people died in a highway pileup caused by a dust storm in Sherman County on Friday.
At least 50 vehicles were reportedly involved.
In Mississippi, Governor Tate Reeves announced that six people died in three counties and three more people were missing. There were 29 injuries across the state, he added in a nighttime post on the social platform X.
MORE FATALITIES
Missouri recorded more fatalities than any other state as scattered twisters overnight killed at least 12, authorities said. The deaths included a man whose home was ripped apart by a tornado.
“It was unrecognizable as a home. Just a debris field,” said Coroner Jim Akers of Butler County, describing the scene that confronted rescuers. “The floor was upside down. We were walking on walls.”
Dakota Henderson said he and others rescuing people trapped in their homes Friday night found five bodies scattered in the debris outside what remained of his aunt’s house in hard-hit Wayne County, Missouri.
“It was a very rough deal last night,” Henderson told reporters, not far from the splintered home from which he said they rescued his aunt through a window of the only room left standing.
Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe said that first responders, volunteers, and faith-based partners “worked tirelessly” through the night “in response to a series of devastating tornadoes and severe storms, and before that, dangerous and damaging fires.”
The deaths came as the massive storm system unleashed winds that triggered deadly dust storms and fanned more than 100 wildfires. Extreme weather conditions were forecast to affect an area home to more than 100 million people.
Winds gusting up to 80 miles per hour (130 kilometers per hour) were predicted from the Canadian border to Texas, threatening blizzard conditions in colder northern areas and wildfire risk in warmer, drier places to the south.
“It’s really disturbing for what happened to the people, the casualties last night,” survivor Henderson said.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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