A series of powerful storms swept over the central and southern U.S. over Memorial Day weekend, killing at least 22 people and leaving a wide trail of destroyed homes, businesses and power outages.
The destructive storms caused deaths in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kentucky and were just north of an oppressive, early season heat wave setting records from South Texas to Florida.
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Forecasters said the severe weather could shift to the East Coast later Monday and warned millions of people outdoors for the holiday to watch the skies.
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Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who earlier declared a state of emergency, and at a Monday news conference said that five people had died in his state. The fifth death was a 54-year-old man who had a heart attack while cutting fallen trees in Caldwell County in western Kentucky, the governor’s office said.
The death toll of 22 also included seven deaths in Cooke County, Texas, from a Saturday tornado that tore through a mobile home park, officials said, and eight deaths across Arkansas.
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Drone video: Valley View, Texas hit hard after severe weather roars across region
Powerful storms killed at least 13 people and left a wide trail of destruction Sunday across Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. (AP)
Two people died in Mayes County, Oklahoma, which is east of Tulsa, authorities said. The injured included guests at an outdoor wedding.
The latest community left with shattered homes and no power was the tiny Kentucky community of Charleston, which took a direct hit Sunday night from a tornado that the governor said appeared to be on the ground for 40 miles.
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“It’s a big mess,” said Rob Linton, who lives in Charleston and is the fire chief of nearby Dawson Springs, hit by a tornado in 2021. “Trees down everywhere. Houses moved. Power lines are down. No utilities whatsoever – no water, no power.”
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Further east, some rural areas of Hopkins County hit by the 2021 tornado around the community of Barnsley were damaged again Sunday night, said county Emergency Management Director Nick Bailey.
“There were a lot of people that were just getting their lives put back together and then this,” Bailey said. “Almost the same spot, the same houses and everything.”
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Beshear has traveled to the area where his father grew up several times for ceremonies where people who lost everything were given the keys to their new homes.
The visits came after a series of tornadoes on a terrifying night in December 2021killed 81 peoplein Kentucky.
“It could have been much worse,” Beshear said of the Memorial Day weekend storms. “The people of Kentucky are very weather aware with everything we’ve been through.”
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More than 400,000 customers across the eastern U.S. werewithout powerMonday afternoon, including about 125,000 in Kentucky. Twelve states reported at least 10,000 outages earlier in the day, according toPowerOutage.us.
President Joe Biden sent condolences to the families who had people killed. He said the Federal Emergency Management Agency is on the ground conducting damage assessments and he has contacted governors to see what federal support they might need.
It’s been a grim month of tornadoes and severe weather in the nation’s midsection.
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Tornadoes in Iowa last week left at least five people dead and dozens injured. Storms killed eight people in Houston earlier this month. The severe thunderstorms and deadly twisters have spawned during a historically bad season for tornadoes, at a time when climate change contributes to the severity of storms around the world. April had the second-highest number of tornadoes on record in the country.
Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, said a persistent pattern of warm, moist air is to blame for the string of tornadoes over the past two months.
That warm moist air is at the northern edge of a heat dome bringing temperatures typically seen at the height of summer to late May.
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In Florida, Melbourne and Ft. Pierce set new daily record highs Monday. Both hit 98 F. Miami set a record high of 96 F on Sunday.
But in Dallas-Fort Worth, highs were forecast to stay in the mid to high 80s for the rest of the week.
By BRUCE SCHREINER and JULIO CORTEZ, The Associated Press
Schreiner reported from Louisville, Kentucky. Associated Press reporter Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
