In seven U.S. states, severe storms killed at least 40 people. This is something to know.
Rain, snow, hail, dust, fire, tornado. Last week, a massive off-road storm system caused a dangerous danger, slamming California’s atmospheric rivers, fueling Oklahoma wildfires and laying egg-laying tornadoes from Missouri to Alabama.
Part of Texas feels like Mars. The huge neighborhoods in the Midwest and South have been reduced to rubble. A governor lost his farmhouse and opened fire. The area near a small Mississippi town was hit twice by a tornado.
All of this adds up to be a devastating mixture. At least 40 deaths in seven states have been attributed to the storm since Friday.
Here is some knowledge about the storm system and its impact.
There were nearly 75 tornadoes reported on Friday and Saturday.
The figures are reported by the Storm Prediction Center, although they may change. Overall, tornadoes and severe storms killed at least 24 people in four states: Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri and Mississippi. Missouri has the highest death toll, 12.
Throughout the area, the houses are balanced and there are huge fields of debris. In Poplar Bluff, Missouri, more than 500 houses have been destroyed in the southeast corner of the state. Alabama, where two deaths have been reported, reported losses in 52 of the state’s 67 counties.
In Mississippi, the area near Tylertown borders Louisiana with a population of about 1,500, was hit by a tornado in two separate cases on Saturday. But experts say this phenomenon is not so unusual in such an outbreak.
The full extent of damage throughout the region may not be known for several days.
Tornadoes usually occur in the south at this time of year. Rare tornadoes have been predicted in the past week, and on Sunday, meteorologists are evaluating the recent series. Emily Thornton, a meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center, called it a “high-end serious incident.” But this is not what happened in March and April at all.
In terms of the number of tornadoes, this outbreak is not an outlier. According to William Bunting, deputy director of the Storm Prediction Center, the latest outbreak in the United States was the killing of 26 people on March 31, 2023 and April 1, 2023.
The wind accelerated wildfires on the plains.
Hurricane fan-shaped wildfires quickly spread across Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas. The worst injury was in Oklahoma, where more than 400 houses and other buildings were destroyed. The Oklahoma Emergency Management Agency said Sunday that at least four people died in the state due to a fire or a strong wind, and 142 were injured.
In Stillwater, a city with about 50,000 Oklahoma State University, dozens of homes were burned down. Gov. Kevin Stitt was one of the victims – he shared a video of him owning a farmhouse in Luther outside Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma residents have been dealing with the threat of tornadoes. But for many people, encountering wildfires is a whole new experience.
J. Bryson Baker, 39, spent his entire life in Stillwater. He didn’t escape the fire until Friday. His family evacuated from their home in Southwest Stillwater and lived with relatives in Oklahoma City.
When he returned as night fell, he said he saw the flames 60 feet high and emitted so much heat that he didn’t know how the firefighters could endure it. The fire destroyed his backyard fence and part of his backyard. His first-story brick house was untouched. But other houses are in the rubble.
“We are tornado lane,” Mr. Baker said. “We usually don’t build or warn or be sure to prepare for wildfires. ”
Sandstorms killed two state roads.
The violent winds also caused dust storms that killed at least 12 people in Texas and Kansas. In the areas near Lubbock and Amarillo, Texas, officials reported that at least four people killed thirty cars crashes. Images on social media show dystopian views of the area with a rich brown-gray haze. A man who made the video can be heard saying, “Do you want to go to Mars? This is Mars.”
In western Kansas, eight people were killed in a pile of cars in a dust storm, creating near-zero visibility conditions on Interstate 70 near the Colorado border, the Kansas Highway Patrol said. Forty-six people were taken to the hospital.
As the storm system fades, a new one is rolling.
The storm system also brought hail to parts of Indiana and Kentucky on Monday and weekends, and is expected to move out of the sea. But as a separate storm system develops, critical fire conditions are expected to be expected in eastern New Mexico, central and western Texas, western Oklahoma and southeastern Colorado.
More than 36 million people (mostly on plains) in the United States were warned of danger as of early Monday, according to the National Weather Service. Such warnings indicate an increased risk of fire hazard.
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