More than 50 million Americans, from Texas to Missouri to the Carolinas, are facing severe weather and tornado warnings Wednesday night.
Storms passed across Maury County, Tennessee, killing one person and injuring four others, Maury Regional Health said.
Related posts
Wednesday is the fourth multiday tornado outbreak in four weeks. Five states, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, have reported seven tornadoes so far.
Since Monday, there have been more than 60 recorded or confirmed tornadoes across numerous states, indicating that the tornado threat remains.
On Wednesday, a cluster of storms in Missouri moved into southern Illinois and western Kentucky, creating a favorable setting for tornado-producing supercells.
At least ten states, from Texas to Kentucky, have issued tornado watches until midnight CT. The tornado watch includes Dallas, Waco, Texas; Springfield, Missouri; Paducah, Kentucky; Nashville; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Huntsville, Alabama.
The National Weather Service declared a tornado emergency Wednesday evening for seven counties in central Tennessee, south of Nashville, following the discovery of a “confirmed large and destructive tornado” near Spring Hill. The NWS established a tornado emergency in 1999, only declaring it when catastrophic damage is imminent or continuing, and when it poses a threat to human life.
Flood watches are also in effect for the Ohio and Tennessee valleys until early Thursday, as the storms will bring significant rain.
Severe thunderstorms extend as far east as the Carolinas, where a severe thunderstorm watch is in force until 10 p.m. ET.
The recent tornado activity follows dozens of confirmed or reported twisters in the Plains and Ohio Valley earlier this week, including a devastating EF4 tornado in Barnsdall, Oklahoma, on Monday.
A tornado rated EF-2 with maximum winds of 135 mph struck Portage, Michigan, just south of Kalamazoo, soon before 6 p.m. ET Tuesday, according to a NWS survey report issued Wednesday. The NWS reported the destruction of numerous homes in two impacted mobile home parks. Several businesses suffered serious damage, including a huge FedEx facility.
For the first time in the state, Union City, Michigan, declared a tornado emergency on Tuesday evening.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a state of emergency in sections of the state on Tuesday in response to the catastrophic storm.
“We feel very fortunate that there were no fatalities, but the devastation is real,” Whitmer told reporters in Portage on Wednesday, stressing that several homes were ripped off their foundations and that there are “a lot of displaced families.”
“Some people lost everything,” she explained.
