Rain, snow, hail, dust, fire, tornadoes. A giant cross-country storm system last week led to one hazard after another, lashing California with an atmospheric river, fueling wildfires in Oklahoma and spawning tornadoes from Missouri to Alabama.
A part of Texas felt like Mars. Huge stretches of communities across the Midwest and South were reduced to rubble. A governor lost a farmhouse to fire. And the area near a tiny town in Mississippi was struck by a tornado twice.
It has all added up to a devastating mix. Since Friday, at least 36 deaths across seven states have been attributed to the storm.
Here are a few things to know about the storm system and its impact.
Nearly 75 tornadoes were reported on Friday and Saturday.
That number was reported by the Storm Prediction Center, though it may change. Overall, tornadoes and severe storms have killed at least 23 people across four states — Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri and Mississippi. Missouri has had the highest number of fatalities, 12.
Across the region, homes were leveled, with huge debris fields in their wake. In Poplar Bluff, Mo., in the southeastern corner of the state, more than 500 homes were destroyed. Alabama, where two people died, reported damage in 52 of the state’s 67 counties.
In Mississippi, the area near Tylertown, which is near the border with Louisiana and has a population of about 1,500, was hit by tornadoes in two separate instances on Saturday. But experts say the phenomenon is not that unusual in an outbreak like this.
The full extent of the damage across the region may not be known for days.
Tornadoes typically occur across the South at this time of year. Long-lasting tornadoes, which are rarer, had been forecast this past week, and on Sunday, meteorologists were assessing the recent series of them. Emily Thornton, a meteorologist with the Storm Prediction Center called it “a high-end severe event.” But it wasn’t totally out of the realm for what happens in March and April.
In terms of the number of tornadoes, this outbreak was not an outlier. The most recent outbreak in the United States was on March 31 and April 1, 2023, when 146 tornadoes caused 26 deaths, according to William Bunting, deputy director of the Storm Prediction Center.
The winds accelerated wildfires across the Plains.
Hurricane-force winds fanned wildfires that spread rapidly in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas. The worst damage was in Oklahoma, where nearly 300 homes and other structures were destroyed.
In Stillwater, a city of about 50,000 that is home to Oklahoma State University, dozens of homes burned. Gov. Kevin Stitt was among the victims — he shared video of a farmhouse he owned in Luther, outside of Oklahoma City, in ruins. Officials reported one fatality related to the fires.
Oklahoma residents deal with the threat of tornadoes all the time. But for many, encountering wildfires was a whole new experience.
J. Bryson Baker, 39, has spent his entire life in Stillwater. He had never fled a fire, until Friday. His family evacuated from their home in southwestern Stillwater to stay with relatives in Oklahoma City.
When he returned at nightfall, he said he saw flames 60 feet tall, emitting so much heat that he didn’t know how firefighters could stand it. The blaze destroyed his backyard fence and part of his backyard. His one-story brick home was untouched. But other homes were in rubble.
“We’re tornado alley,” said Mr. Baker, whose home was destroyed by a twister when he was about 8 years old. “We’re typically not built or warned or necessarily prepared for wildfires.”
Dust storms led to deaths on the roads in two states.
The fierce winds also produced dust storms in Texas and Kansas that killed at least 12 people. In the region around Lubbock and Amarillo in Texas, officials reported more than three dozen car crashes, killing at least four people. Images on social media showed a dystopian view of the area, featuring a thick, brownish-gray haze. A man making a video could be heard saying: “You want to go to Mars? This is Mars.”
In western Kansas, eight people were killed in a vehicle pileup during a dust storm that created near-zero visibility conditions on Interstate 70 near the Colorado border, the Kansas Highway Patrol said. Forty-six people were taken to hospitals.
The threat for more severe weather is lower than previous days.
On Sunday, the threat of tornadoes and thunderstorms was expected to be over in the South and to shift east, though at a level much lower than Saturday’s. Forecasters said there would be a slight risk of severe storms and tornadoes from central Florida to western Pennsylvania. A few locations in this area could record up to five inches of rain, particularly in eastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina.
On Monday, the storm system, which also brought hail to parts of Indiana and Kentucky over the weekend, is expected to move offshore. But as a separate storm system rolls in, critical fire conditions are expected to return on Monday and Tuesday, with strong winds predicted across eastern New Mexico, central and western Texas, western Oklahoma and southeastern Colorado.
Reporting was contributed by Judson Jones, Dana Goldstein, Gwen Moritz, Breena Kerr, Jennifer A. Brown, Simon J. Levien, Qasim Nauman, Yan Zhuang and Jonathan Wolfe.
