At least 26 people across four states have died and dozens more are injured after a violent storm system swept across the country, slamming the Mississippi Valley and Deep South.
A brutal combination of tornadoes, severe storms and whipping winds has left at least 12 dead in Missouri, the Associated Press reports. Another eight died in Kansas on Friday in a highway pile-up involving 50 vehicles amid a dust storm.
Then, after a dust storm ripped through Texas on Friday, the state’s department of public safety reported three deaths in three separate car crashes due to low visibility and high winds. Another three people also died in Arkansas amid the storms.
One man was killed after a tornado tore apart his home.
“It was unrecognizable as a home. Just a debris field,” Butler County, Missouri Coroner Jim Akers told the Associated Press. “The floor was upside down. We were walking on walls.” A woman in the home was saved by rescuers, the outlet noted.
Americans across the country could see extreme weather conditions this weekend as the storm system moves east. Some 200,000 Americans are without power across as of Saturday evening, according to poweroutage.us.
A “tornado outbreak” is expected across the central Gulf Coast states and Deep South on Saturday night, according to the Storm Prediction Center.
Heavy winds threaten a wall of states between the northern Michigan to the Florida panhandle, with gusts predicted to reach up to 50 mph in some states, according to the National Weather Service.
Minnesota and the Dakotas could even see blizzards, with forceful winds and heavy snowfall of up to eight inches expected through Saturday afternoon and evening.
While states in the northern U.S. get dumped with snow, fires are devastating Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas. In some Oklahoma communities, officials ordered locals to evacuate as more than 130 fires were reported across the state, the Associated Press reported.
At a press conference Saturday, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt said nearly 300 homes were damaged and more than 170,000 acres had burned due to the fires.
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Additional reporting by AP.
