“We have teams out surveying the damage from last night’s tornadoes and have first responders on the ground to assist,” Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on X.
She and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp declared states of emergency. Kemp said he was making the declaration in anticipation of severe weather moving in later on Saturday.
Matt Wolff, left, works underneath his carport with the help of his father-in-law Dempsey Watson and friend Tyler Umbright, right, as they work to stabilize after a severe storm in Bridgeton, Mo.Credit: AP
On Friday, meanwhile, authorities said three people were killed in car crashes during a dust storm in Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle.
Extreme weather encompasses a zone of 100 million people
The deaths came as a massive storm system moving across the country unleashed winds that triggered deadly dust storms and fanned more than 100 wildfires.
Extreme weather conditions were forecast to affect an area home to more than 100 million people. Winds gusting up to 130km/h were predicted from the Canadian border to Texas, threatening blizzard conditions in colder northern areas and wildfire risk in warmer, drier places to the south.
Mark Nelson waits with his tractor-trailer after it overturned during high winds and a possible tornado in Missouri.Credit: AP
The National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings for parts of far western Minnesota and far eastern South Dakota starting early on Saturday. Snow accumulations of 7.6 to 15.2 centimetres were expected, with up to 30 centimetres possible.
Winds gusting to 97km/h were expected to cause whiteout conditions.
Evacuations were ordered in some Oklahoma communities as more than 130 fires were reported across the state. Nearly 300 homes were damaged or destroyed.
Governor Kevin Stitt said at a Saturday news conference that some 689 square kilometres had burned in his state.
Loading
The State Patrol said winds were so strong that they toppled several tractor-trailers.
Experts said it was not unusual to see such weather extremes in March.
Tornadoes hit amid storm outbreak
The Storm Prediction Centre said fast-moving storms could spawn twisters and hail as large as baseballs on Saturday, but the greatest threat would come from winds near or exceeding hurricane force, with gusts of 160km/h possible.
Significant tornadoes continued to hit on Saturday. The regions at highest risk stretch from eastern Louisiana and Mississippi through Alabama, western Georgia and the Florida panhandle, the centre said.
Bailey Dillon, 24, and her fiancé, Caleb Barnes, watched a massive tornado from their front porch in Tylertown, Mississippi, about 0.8 kilometres away as it struck an area near Paradise Ranch RV Park.
They drove over afterwards to see if anyone needed help and recorded a video depicting snapped trees, levelled buildings and overturned vehicles.
“The amount of damage was catastrophic,” Dillon said. “It was a large amount of cabins, RVs, campers that were just flipped over – everything was destroyed.”
Paradise Ranch reported on Facebook that all its staff and guests were safe and accounted for, but Dillon said the damage extended beyond the ranch itself.
“Homes and everything were destroyed all around it,” she said. “Schools and buildings are just completely gone.”
Some of the imagery from the extreme weather has gone viral.
Tad Peters and his dad, Richard Peters, had pulled over to fuel up their pick-up truck in Rolla, Missouri, on Friday night when they heard tornado sirens and saw other motorists flee the interstate to park.
“Whoa, is this coming? Oh, it’s here. It’s here,” Tad Peters can be heard saying on a video. “Look at all that debris. Ohhh. My God, we are in a torn …”
His father then rolled up the truck window. The two were headed to Indiana for a weightlifting competition but decided to turn around and head back home to Norman, Oklahoma, about six hours away, where they encountered wildfires.
Wildfires elsewhere in the Southern Plains threatened to spread rapidly amid warm, dry weather and strong winds in Texas, Kansas, Missouri and New Mexico.
High winds also knocked out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, according to the website poweroutage.us.
