Major storm system unleashes tornadoes, snow across the US
The storm system was expected to move over the Mid-Atlantic coast by Thursday evening and northeastward to the Gulf of Maine by Friday, according to the weather service. Forecasters anticipate more than 1-2 feet of snow in parts of New England by late Thursday.
A major storm system threatened the Southeast and New England Wednesday while more than 200,000 households in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin remained without power after Tuesday’s messy weather, according to a database maintained by USA TODAY.
On Tuesday, a confirmed tornado uprooted trees and damaged homes in an Atlanta suburb. There were reports of possible tornadoes in Alabama, West Virginia, Tennessee, Illinois and Kentucky, where a family of five was rescued after being trapped under an overturned mobile home, according to WFIE-TV.
The severe weather caused at least one death: KJRH-TV reported that a 46-year-old unhoused woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma, died after seeking shelter in a storm drain.
As residents in the Ohio Valley cleaned up, millions of people in the upper Midwest and eastern United States braced for possible severe weather, with the Florida Panhandle and southern Georgia under a tornado watch and heavy snow forecast across parts of the upper Mississippi Valley and upper Great Lakes.
The storm system was expected to move over the Mid-Atlantic coast by Thursday evening and northeastward to the Gulf of Maine by Friday, according to the weather service. Forecasters anticipate more than 1-2 feet of snow in parts of New England by late Thursday.
Conditions in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic are expected to subside by Friday.
Wednesday’s storms fell on the 50th anniversary of the 1974 tornado “Super Outbreak,” which wreaked havoc in the Eastern U.S., according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, killing 335 people.
The NOAA said the 1974 disaster served as “the catalyst for a major overhaul” of the National
Weather Service, spurring modernization of the agency’s observational technology.
Ky. residents assess damage
Megan Feria of Prospect, Kentucky, just outside Louisville, was on the phone with her husband as he drove home from work Tuesday while she watched the storm approach through a window.
“Then I saw all of our flowers that we had hanging on the back were gone. I was like, ‘I should probably head to the basement now,’ ” Feria told The Courier Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, as she cleared fallen trees from her yard. Her house narrowly missed big damage.
Her parents’ home down the street was hit by a falling tree. No one was hurt, though, a positive conclusion after a tense ride home for her husband.
A tornado has not yet been confirmed by the National Weather Service of Louisville.