Tornadoes damaged numerous homes, destroyed a fire station, briefly trapped people in a grocery store and ripped the roof off an apartment complex in Mississippi, while two people died as a tree crunched their mobile home in Alabama, authorities said Wednesday.
The National Weather Service had warned that strong twisters capable of carving up communities over long distances were possible as the storm front moved eastward from Texas. They were fuelled by record high temperatures and threatened a stretch of the United States where more than 25 million people live.
A total of 73 tornado warnings and 120 severe thunderstorm warnings were issued from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday morning, said Matthew Elliott, a meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.
Significant tornado damage was evident in the Flatwood community north of Montgomery, Alabama, where two people were killed as a tree struck their home, said Christina Thornton, director of the Montgomery County Emergency Management Agency.
Others in the tight-knit community narrowly escaped with their lives: Caroline Bankston said she and Tim Wiseman were watching the news and trying to figure out where the twister was when she looked out the window and realized it was on top of them. They ran to a safer corner as the roof caved in, burying their sofa in debris.
"We just prayed, prayed, prayed, 'Please God. Please take care of us. Please,' and he did. You can replace stuff, but you can't replace a person," Bankston said, her voice still trembling. "We were just sitting there on the couch. Thank God we moved."
Search and rescue teams would continue going door to door until everyone's accounted for, Montgomery County Sheriff Derrick Cunningham said.
Isaiah Sankey, who represents Flatwood as vice chairman of the Montgomery County Commission, expressed grief for the lives lost and vowed that installing storm shelters will be a priority.
"When we do rebuild, we will have storm shelters," Sankey said. "We have got to prepare for these unforeseen circumstances."
In the west Alabama town of Eutaw, large sections of the roof were missing from an apartment complex, displacing 15 families in the middle of the night, and power lines and trees were "all over the road," Eutaw Police Chief Tommy Johnson told WBRC-TV.
A suspected tornado damaged numerous homes during the night in Hale County, Alabama, where the emergency director said more than a third of the people live in highly vulnerable mobile homes.
"I have seen some really nice mobile homes tied down, but they just don't stand a chance against a tornado," Hale County Emergency Management Director Russell Weeden told WBRC.
Two other people were injured as the storm tore apart homes in Caldwell Parish, Louisiana, Sheriff Clay Bennett told KNOE-TV.
The weather service confirmed that tornadoes hit the ground in Mississippi. Images of the wreckage in Caledonia showed a grocery store damaged, a fire station shredded and a house toppled, but Lowndes County Emergency Management Agency Director Cindy Lawrence told WTVA-TV that everyone escaped injury.
Hail stones crashed against the windows of City Hall in the small town of Tchula, Mississippi, where sirens blared as the mayor and other residents took cover. "It was hitting against the window, and you could tell that it was nice-sized balls of it," Mayor Ann Polk said after the storm passed.
High winds downed power lines, and flooding was a hazard as more than five inches (13 centimetres) of rain fell within several hours in some places. More than 50,000 customers in Mississippi and Alabama were without electricity Wednesday morning, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility outages.
Forecasters had been warning of the potential for a tornado outbreak for several days ahead of the storm. Elliott, who coordinates the warnings, said it took a lot of work to get the word out as people celebrated the holidays, and it seemed that people were taking the threat seriously.
"It's a very vulnerable part of the country for tornadoes -- especially tornadoes after dark," Elliott said. "We all have to work together to get the best results on these types of events that could potentially lead to lots of devastation."
Record high temperatures in Texas and Louisiana intensified the storm front before it moved into Mississippi and Alabama, forecasters said Wednesday.
Shreveport, Louisiana heated up to 81 degrees (27.2 Celsius) on Tuesday; and Tyler, Texas hit 82 degrees (27.8 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service in Shreveport. Both those marks broke the old record of 80, set in 1949, the weather service said.
Jeff Martin and Michael Warren in Atlanta, Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas; Michael Goldberg in Jackson, Mississippi; and Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.
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