Multiple tornadoes that began spawning across several southern US states on Saturday afternoon have resulted in the deaths of at least four people.
Officials spent Sunday assessing the devastation inflicted by the severe storm system that produced the tornadoes. Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center, told the Associated Press that there were at least 45 reports of damage from the tornadoes across the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.
According to AccuWeather, severe thunderstorms on Saturday were responsible for more than 200 storm reports, including nearly four dozen tornadoes.
At least five tornadoes were reported to have hit the Houston area alone, with one confirmed death there so far. A 48-year-old woman was found about 100ft (30 metres) from her home in the Liverpool area south of Houston, according to the Brazoria county sheriff’s office.
An additional two people were killed during storms in Mississippi, including an 18-year-old who died after a tree fell on her home on Saturday night in Adams county, state emergency management officials said.
At least one other person died in Lowndes county in Mississippi – and at least eight more were injured across the state, officials said.
It was also reported that a 70-year-old man was killed on Sunday in Statesville, North Carolina, in what the state highway patrol described as a “freak accident” when a tree landed on his pickup truck as he was driving.
The storm system caused damage to hundreds of homes and buildings, with the extent of the destruction still being surveyed on Monday by crews. There were at least 60,000 power outages in affected states on Saturday, according to PowerOutage.us.
The storms occurred at a time of peak holiday travel, with hazardous road and airline travel conditions affecting passengers across the country. Reuters reported that more than 7,000 flights in the US were delayed on Saturday, and more than 200 were canceled.
