A string of severe storms that tore through the central and southern United States, leaving a path of devastation and destruction behind, claimed the lives of at least twenty-one persons.
The storms, which were located directly north of a brutal early-season heatwave that broke records from south Texas to Florida, claimed lives in the US states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kentucky.
Following tornadoes that blasted through the state early on Monday, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear issued a state of emergency.
“It was a tough night for our people,” Beshear said on social media platform X, later adding in a press briefing that “devastating storms” had hit almost the entire state.
According to the governor, “at least a few” tornadoes made landfall in Kentucky over the weekend, with one of them traveling roughly 65 kilometers (40 miles) on land. Officials reported that the storms had damaged 100 state highways and roads.
The region was hit by a severe weather system that started late on Saturday, tearing up homes and flipping cars, leaving a horrific trail of ruin in its aftermath.
According to totals provided by state emergency agencies, at least eight people died over the Memorial Day holiday weekend in Arkansas, seven in Texas, four in Kentucky, and two in Oklahoma.
Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington told reporters that the tornado that caused the deaths in Texas struck the Valley View neighbourhood to the north of Dallas. Along with overturning cars on an interstate highway, it demolished houses and a gas station.
According to Johnny Janzen, the county chief of emergency management in Mayes County, Oklahoma, a tornado struck the area late on Saturday, leaving at least two people dead. Janzen spoke to the Fox News affiliate in Tulsa.
The little village of Charleston in Kentucky was the most recent area to be left without electricity and with its homes broken.
“It’s a big mess,” said resident Rob Linton. “Trees down everywhere. Houses moved. Power lines are down. No utilities whatsoever – no water, no power.”
The weather on Monday caused power disruptions for hundreds of thousands of Americans, with over 180,000 outages in Kentucky alone, according to the PowerOutage.US tracking website.
The governor of Kentucky, Beshear, stated that it might take several days for all of the electricity to be restored.
The National Weather Service stated that when the storms moved eastward on Monday, they were still expected to cause damaging wind and hail, and they might even result in “isolated tornadoes” in the eastern Mid-Atlantic.
A large portion of the eastern United States, extending from Alabama to New York, is under the highest alert for severe weather on Monday.
The deadly twisters and intense thunderstorms have occurred during a season that has historically been poor for tornadoes, and at a time when global climate change is increasing the intensity of storms. The second-highest number of tornadoes in US records occurred in April.
The spate of tornadoes over the previous two months, according to Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, is the result of a prolonged pattern of warm, wet air.
The northern edge of a heat dome is surrounded by warm, humid air, which brings temperatures normally associated with the height of summer into late May.
The most recent bout of severe weather occurred only a few days after a strong tornado devastated a hamlet in Iowa, killing four people, and more tornadoes made landfall in Texas last week.
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