Thread: 230 tornadoes in 3 days kill more than 40 people

141 tornadoes kill at least 17 people

Tornadoes continue to head up the east coast

Posted: 7:15 PM
Last Updated: 42 minutes ago

The tornadoes are touching down, at least 141 now, and nearly two dozen in the last couple of hours.

At least seventeen people have been killed by the violent weather that sent dozens of tornadoes swirling through the south and Midwest.

Hundreds of homes and businesses have been damaged or destroyed, reduced to bricks, and the watches and warnings are continuing to spread across the country.

From Alabama all the way to Pennsylvania, tens of millions of Americans have been or are dealing with this tornado threat.

In Prattville, Alabama, mobile homes weren't just obliterated, they were launched in the air.

Three members of the same family died when the twister demolished a church.

A tornado wreaked havoc in Jackson, Mississippi, roaring across a busy highway, bashing a path through electrical lines and transformers, each burst of light plunging more people into darkness.

Ten miles away in Clinton, Mississippi, search and rescue efforts continue after a tornado tore the roofs off homes and making shambles of neighborhoods and lives.

The deadly storm system also sent twister rampaging across the southeast.

In Little Rock, a mother and son were killed in their own home when a tree fell on it.

Seven people were killed in Arkansas during the storms.

In tiny Tushka, Oklahoma, twisters churned a path a mile wide and nine miles long.

Two elderly sisters died.

The town's only two schools were also damaged in the storms.

Also in Oklahoma, a man emerged from his storm cellar to find what was left of his boat impaled on a tree.

In North Carolina, the storm has already left a lot of damage.

Several trees have been snapped and ripped out of the ground, and many homes and parking lots are littered with debris and structure damage.

Lee County officials say a funnel cloud has been spotted in the are, but so far there have not been any reported injuries.

The storms uprooted many trees, and the same storm is now barreling up the east coast.

http://www.abc2news.com/dpp/news/nation ... -17-people

UPDATE 3-Tornadoes, storms kill at least 18 in U.S. South

Sat Apr 16, 2011 7:17pm EDT

* Saturday likely final day for region's deadly storms
* Storm system type not unusual for April in U.S. South
(Adds Carolina tornadoes, details, new death toll)

By Peggy Gargis and Harriet McLeod

CHARLESTON, S.C., April 16 (Reuters) - Tornadoes tore into the Carolinas on Saturday afternoon as the death toll rose to 18 people from storms across the southern United States over the last three days.
A mechanic at a tire shop in Raleigh, North Carolina, said he took shelter in his truck while co-workers squeezed into an interior room when the storm hit.
"It was one hell of a storm," said Bryan Jackson. "I started to see the roof vibrate and then the roof separated and it was gone."
The area south of downtown Raleigh was littered with snapped telephone poles, downed wires, broken glass and roofing debris.
One storm-related death occurred north of Elizabethtown, North Carolina, according to Bladen County Emergency Services.
Six people were injured when a tornado touched down in Berkeley County, South Carolina, the National Weather Service said.
The service said some mobile homes collapsed in Lee County, North Carolina, from high winds. Local meteorologists said the storm's intensity was declining as it approached the coast.
At Ray Price Harley-Davidson in Raleigh, some 500 people had left the showroom's spring open house shortly before the storm hit around 4 p.m.
"We were very fortunate," said Dave Hushek, a manager at the dealership. "It sounded like a train going by. The wind was going this way and then all the sudden it was going that way."
Storms have torn a path of destruction from Oklahoma on Thursday night through the deep South on Friday and on to the East Coast on Saturday.
'JUST THE RIGHT COMBINATION'
"This system has clearly had the most intense severe storms of the early spring season," said Corey Mead, a meteorologist with the National Storm Prediction Center.
On Friday seven people died in Alabama, seven in Arkansas and one in Mississippi. Two people were killed on Thursday night when a tornado flattened buildings in Tushka, Oklahoma.
Greg Carbin, meteorologist with the Storm Prediction Center, said Saturday would likely be the final day for the deadly storm system in the region.
He said this type of storm system in the South was not unusual for April, as moist spring air meets the remnants of cold winter air.
"You have just the right combination of ingredients for severe weather," Carbin said. "This is a dangerous time in the southern United States."
Tornado season typically runs from March to early July in the United States, moving from south to north as the year progresses. The storms kill an average of 70 people a year.
The worst U.S. outbreak of tornadoes on record occurred on April 3-4, 1974, when 307 people were killed by 148 twisters in 13 states.
Storms, some severe, also were expected on Saturday from the Florida Panhandle through eastern and southern Georgia, according to weather.com. (Reporting by Peggy Gargis in Birmingham, Alabama; Harriet McLeod in Charleston, S.C.; Ned Barnett in Raleigh, N.C.; and Tim Ghianni in Nashville, Tennessee; Jim Brumm in Wilmington, N.C. Writing by Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Xavier Briand)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/ ... 3520110416

Rampaging storms kill dozens in several states

Updated 7m ago

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A furious storm system that kicked up tornadoes, flash floods and hail as big as softballs has left at least 40 people dead on a rampage that stretched for days as it barreled from Oklahoma to North Carolina and Virginia.

Emergency crews searched for victims in hard-hit swaths of North Carolina, where 62 tornadoes were reported from the worst spring storm in two decades to hit the state. Ten people were confirmed dead in Bertie County, county manager Zee Lamb said. The state’s death toll reached at least 17 people on Sunday.

In the capital city of Raleigh, three family members died in a mobile home park, said Wake County spokeswoman Sarah Willamson-Baker. At that trailer park, residents lined up outside Sunday and asked police guarding the area when they might get back in.

STORY: N.C. reports at least 4 storm deaths
Peggy Mosley, 54, who has lived in the park for 25 years, said she was prepared when the storm bore down on the trailer park. She gathered small pillows and other material and hunkered down in her small bathroom.

“I went and got into my small bathroom and just sat in there and cried and prayed until it was over,â€

Wow, . I guess construction is going to boom again. C'mon America, get back to work. Get rid of those illegals from doing all of the re-construction on those neighborhoods. That is a juxtuposition there. Both bad, and good.

U.S. storms kill more than 40

By the CNN Wire Staff
April 17, 2011 4:52 p.m. EDT

(CNN) -- Powerful storms that have ripped across the Southeast killed more than 40 people over the past three days, according to the National Weather Service and reports from several states.

A CNN meteorologist called the storms' impact on North Carolina "epic."

Among the worst-hit places was Bertie County, North Carolina, a rural area in the northeast part of the state. The weather service reported 14 deaths in the county. Zee Lamb, county manager, said there were 11 fatalities.

More than 50 people were taken to hospitals in Greenville, and between 50 and 70 homes were destroyed, Lamb said.

"Reports are still incoming," Mike Sprayberry, deputy director of the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management, said Sunday morning.

The death toll across six states includes another nine in other parts of North Carolina; four in Virginia; seven in Alabama, two in Oklahoma, seven in Arkansas and one in Mississippi.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center said it received reports of at least 230 tornadoes across the region during the past three days, though some of those reports were likely sightings of the same twister.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declared a state of emergency "to direct all possible resources towards responding to this event."

For North Carolina, "When the storm count is finalized, this will likely be an historic tornado outbreak," said CNN meteorologist Jacqui Jeras. "It is quite unusual to have this many supercell tornadoes of this intensity strike the area."

iReport: Drive-by look at Raleigh damage

North Carolina normally gets about 19 tornadoes a year, according to the National Climatic Data Center. There are 90 preliminary reports of tornadoes in the state in the latest storm system. A single tornado often gets multiple reports, so it is not immediately clear how many there were, Jeras explained. "But regardless, this is an epic event."

The deaths in North Carolina included three people in Raleigh who were killed in mobile homes, the weather service said. In eastern North Carolina, two people died near Ammon, one was killed in the Bladenboro area and another died in the Benson and Black Creek area, the weather service said.

iReport photos: Damage in N.C. | More

North Carolina state Rep. Mike Stone reported two additional deaths in Lee County.

At Camp Lejeune, according to a news release, roughly a dozen homes were destroyed and as many as 120 were damaged following a series of tornadoes that touched down near a housing area Saturday evening.

One seriously injured child was taken to a nearby hospital, according to the statement.

CNN affiliate WTVD broadcast images of damaged homes and vehicles in Smithfield, North Carolina, as local residents and emergency workers surveyed the damage.

Gov. Bev Perdue declared a state of emergency for the entire state, according to the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management.

"We've been assured we'll have whatever federal support we'll need," Perdue told reporters late Saturday.

The governor said that as of late Saturday, the number of storm-related power outages had dropped from 250,000 to 143,000.

In South Carolina, a tornado cut through Berkeley County, destroying a church and injuring six people, the weather service said.

Meanwhile, emergency crews in Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama worked to assess the damage after the storm system moved north through the Carolinas and up into southern Virginia.

iReport photos: Lightning strike in Alabama | More


In Virginia, three Gloucester County residents died and 64 suffered injuries from the fast-moving storms Saturday, according to Bob Spieldenner, director of public affairs for the Virginia Department of Emergency Management.

A tornado also ripped the roof off a school in the county, felled trees that blocked multiple roads and severed power lines, leaving 9,300 people without electricity, according to Spieldenner.

In the Shenandoah Valley, in the western part of the state, a child died after being swept away in a flash flood, according to the National Weather Service. Spieldenner said authorities rescued another flood victim, but a third is missing.

The storms were the latest in a round of severe weather that has hit parts of the Midwest and South since Thursday.

They left a trail of downed trees and power lines, scattered cars and crushed homes as it moved east and then turned north.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/04/17/severe ... gletoolbar

RELATED

FEMA - Aftermath of Severe Southern Storms – Supporting our State and Local Partners

http://www.alipac.us/ftopicp-1214531.html