Catherine Rusoff
Severe storms hit the central and southeastern United States on Tuesday night and Wednesday, spawning damaging tornadoes, producing massive hail and killing two people in Tennessee and another in North Carolina.
The storm that hit northeast Tennessee brought strong winds that downed power lines and trees. Claiborne County Sheriff Bob Brooks said a 22-year-old man was in a car struck by one of the trees. Claiborne County Mayor Joe Brooks also confirmed the death in a post on social media.
On Wednesday afternoon, a tornado emergency — the National Weather Service’s highest warning level — was issued for an area south of Nashville, including the cities of Spring Hill, Chapel Hill and Eagleville.
A tornado warning had already been issued in neighboring Columbia, about 45 miles south of Nashville.
Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder confirmed in a statement that at least one person died as a result of the storm, but no details about the cause of death were immediately provided.
Molder said there have been “a number of sightings of confirmed tornado landings” in the area that have resulted in “bodily injuries and property damage.”
The Maury County Office of Emergency Management, in a statement, asked “everyone to stay out of areas hit” by the storm, adding that all schools in the county would be closed on Thursday.
In North Carolina, a state of emergency was declared for Gaston County on Wednesday night following a large storm. First responders were working to clear roads of downed power lines and broken trees and helping residents, authorities said. The New Hope Fire Department responded to a downed tree on a car. One person in the car died and another was taken to hospital. employees said.
More than 152,000 customers were without power in North Carolina and Tennessee as of Wednesday night, according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us.
Tornadoes were first reported after dark Tuesday in parts of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, according to the National Weather Service. The storms came day after deadly twister destroyed an Oklahoma town.
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The National Weather Service confirmed that tornadoes touched down Tuesday in western Ohio: five in Warren County and one each in Darke, Mercer and Auglaize counties. The weather service said crews are still surveying areas of Franklin and Butler counties to determine if tornadoes touched down there as well. Radar indicated a tornado touched down in Jefferson County, but crews will have to assess the damage to determine its classification, said Jeff Craven, a weather service meteorologist in Pittsburgh.
Crews were able to assess damage Wednesday from the powerful storms that contained hail and heavy rain and knocked out power to thousands of utility customers.
In Michigan, weather service meteorologist Nathan Jeruzal said tornadoes touched down in Kalamazoo, Cass and Branch counties — all in the southwestern part of the state. Governor Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency for four counties.
The Portage area of Kalamazoo County was hit hard when a FedEx facility was destroyed and more than a dozen mobile homes were destroyed. Around 50 people were temporarily trapped inside damaged facilities due to downed power lines.
More than a dozen homes were destroyed in a mobile home park in adjacent Pavilion Township and 16 people were injured, Kalamazoo County Sheriff Richard Fuller said.
Samantha Smith grabbed a box Wednesday afternoon as she left her mother’s partially destroyed home in Pavilion Township, about 140 miles west of Detroit. Inside the box were his grandmother’s ashes. Being able to retrieve the most precious items offered Smith a rare moment of relief amid the storm’s devastation.
His parents and brother were injured during the storm but survived.
“I’ve thanked God probably a billion times since this happened yesterday,” she said. “My children are healthy and well. We just need to get back what we lost.”
Travis Wycoff ventured outside Tuesday night after seeing on radar that a tornado had touched down in the Portage area, and said he helped an elderly couple out of their partially collapsed home and freed a guide dog from a House.
“There were a lot of people running through the streets trying to find people and their pets,” Wycoff said. “It was a lot of chaos.”
In southern Indiana, the National Weather Service confirmed that a tornado touched down Wednesday morning, damaging homes in a subdivision north of the city of Sellersburg, located about 12 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky.
The Clark County Emergency Management Agency said the storm damaged 24 structures.
Candice Holmes, a resident of the Lewis & Clark neighborhood north of Sellersburg, said she, her husband and son sought shelter in the bathroom when they heard the storm approaching and “the wind picked up all at once.”
“It was definitely a scary moment. … And I’m glad we’re alive,” Holmes told WDRB-TV.
Tornadoes were also confirmed in Pennsylvania, around Pittsburgh, central Arkansas and northern West Virginia. The West Virginia tornado, which began Wednesday in far eastern Ohio, was at least the 11th tornado this year in the state that sees two tornadoes in an average year.
Hail the size of a baseball was reported Wednesday in areas southwest of St. Louis, Missouri. Heavy rains caused flash flooding and at least one water rescue near Sullivan, a town that was hit by a small tornado just two days earlier. Damaging hail was also reported in the Kansas City area.
Tuesday’s storms came a day after parts of the central U.S. were hit by heavy rain, high winds, hail and tornadoes. Both the Plains and the Midwest have been hit by tornadoes this spring.
In the US, the whole week looks stormy. The Midwest and South are expected to be hit hardest by severe weather throughout the rest of the week, including Indianapolis, Memphis, Nashville, St. Louis and Cincinnati — cities home to more than 21 million people. It should be clear by the weekend.
