By Rich McKay and Tatiana Bautzer
(Reuters) -Portions of West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania were under a new tornado watch issued on Sunday by the National Weather Service, as the death toll from storms rose to at least 34 people in six states since Friday.
The storms that hit the South and the Midwest headed east on Sunday.
Almost 300,000 consumers had no power in the affected areas on Sunday mid-afternoon, according to the website PowerOutage. Missouri reported the largest number of deaths, 12 fatalities spanning five counties, the state’s highway patrol posted on X.
Robbie Myers, the director of emergency management in Missouri’s Butler County, told reporters that more than 500 homes, a church and a grocery store in the county were destroyed.
A mobile home park had been “totally destroyed,” he said.
“Everything around it here is really bad. The trailer park up the street had fatalities. So, I mean, we don’t have nothing compared to anything like that.
I still have a home. They don’t,” Rick Brittingham, a Missouri resident, told Reuters from Butler County.
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves posted on X that six deaths had been reported in the state – one in Covington County, two in Jefferson Davis County and three in Walthall County.
According to preliminary assessments, 29 people were injured statewide and 21 counties sustained storm damage, Reeves said.
In Arkansas, three deaths occurred, the state’s Department of Emergency Management said, adding that there were 32 injuries.
Eight deaths were confirmed in a crash involving more than 50 cars in Sherman County in Kansas, caused by a severe dust storm, the Kansas Highway Patrol said in a statement.
Many injured travelers were taken to local hospitals.
At least two people died in Alabama due to the severe weather, Governor Kay Ivey said in a post on X. “We have reports of damage in 52 of our 67 counties,” the governor said.
Crashes caused by dust storms near Amarillo, Texas, resulted in three deaths, according to the state’s Department of Public Safety.
Thirty-nine tornadoes were reported, but not yet confirmed , from Friday to midday Sunday, according to the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta, Tatiana Bautzer in New York and Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; Editing by Aidan Lewis, Rod Nickel, Deepa Babington, William Mallard, Mark Porter and Diane Craft)
