At least 21 people have died, including two children, in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kentucky after violent storms ripped through the central US over Memorial Day weekend.
At least 11 tornadoes swept through affected states on Sunday, with severe weather forecast to continue throughout Memorial Day. Now, a staggering 120m Americans remain at risk of large hail, damaging winds and tornadoes on Monday as storm systems move towards the Gulf Coast and East Coast, according to the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center.
The storms could bring gusts up to 70 miles per hour and quarter-sized hail.
Meanwhile, record-high temperatures are feared in other parts of the country, with excessive heat warnings and heat advisories over southern Texas on Monday.
At least eight people have so far died as a result of the extreme storms in Arkansas, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a news conference on Sunday evening.
One of the victims suffered from a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and depended on an oxygen concentrator.
However, the machine stopped working when the power went out, officials at the press conference said.
Another victim died from a heart attack while another was killed when a tree or a branch hit a trailer, they added.
These three victims came on top of the five who were confirmed dead earlier in the day by local officials.
One death occurred in Benton County, two people died in Marion County, and one person in Baxter County, the local sheriff’s departments said. A 26-year-old woman was also found dead outside a home in Boone County, according to The Associated Press.
Four people died in Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear confirmed on Monday morning. The victims included a 67-year-old woman in Mercer County, a 62-year-old woman in Hardin County, a 48-year-old woman in Hopkins County and a 34-year-old man in Jefferson County, the governor said.
A fifth person was injured and is fighting for their life as of Monday afternoon, Mr Beshear said.
Meanwhile in Oklahoma, at least two people were killed in Mayes County after a tornado ripped through the northeast part of the state.
In Texas, multiple tornados were reported throughout the state with one plowing through Cooke County on Saturday night – approximately 50 miles north of Dallas – leaving seven people dead.
The sheriff confirmed that a two-year-old and a five-year-old were among the dead. The victims also included three other family members who were found in a home near Valley View – a rural community close to the Oklahoma border.
“It’s just a trail of debris left. The devastation is pretty severe,” Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington told The Associated Press.
Approximately 60 to 80 people also suffered non-life threatening injuries when an AP Travel Stop and Shell station alongside I-35 collapsed on them, after they had taken shelter in the building from the storm.
In Texas, more than 200 homes and other buildings were destroyed, with more than 100 others damaged – numbers that are expected to rise.
A rare tornado watch, which was labelled as a “particularly dangerous situation” by the Storm Prediction Center, was in effect for parts of Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and western Kentucky on Sunday and damaging winds, thunderstorms and two-inch hail pounded areas of Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kentucky.
Hard-hit states have also been hammered by power outages, according to PowerOutage.us, with more than 160,000 customers without power in Kentucky alone as of Monday afternoon.
