(Reuters) -Storms sweeping across parts of the central United States left a trail of destruction and death as forecasters warned of more severe weather to impact several states over the Memorial Day holiday weekend.
At least five people, including children, were killed in northern Texas when a powerful tornado struck a rural area near the Oklahoma border on Saturday night, Ray Sappington, the sheriff of Cooke County, told local media.
The storm caused major damage to homes and businesses in the area, and numerous injuries were reported, Cooke County officials said. Emergency personnel were combing through the debris on Sunday and looking for missing persons.
A tornado also crossed into Denton County, northwest of Dallas, on Saturday night, damaging homes and other property, and knocking down power lines. Officials said that “a number of individuals” with injuries were transported to area hospitals.
“The number of people injured and the types of injuries are not known at this time as the incident is still a working scene,” authorities wrote in a post on the Denton County Facebook page.
Hundreds of thousands of customers were without power in states including Arkansas, Missouri and Texas on Sunday, according to poweroutages.us.
In Arkansas, at least one person died and multiple people were injured in Benton County as a result of what officials called a “violent weather event.”
Storms caused widespread damage and at least two fatalities in parts of Oklahoma, where officials activated an Emergency Operations Center to coordinate efforts statewide.
After wreaking havoc across the central states, storms were moving east on Sunday and were expected to merge into a larger complex of thunderstorms, threatening to unleash more severe weather across a large area including parts of Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee.
The National Weather Service warned of damaging winds, large hail and more tornadoes in the affected areas.
The latest bout of extreme weather came just days after a powerful tornado ripped through a rural Iowa town, killing four people, and more twisters touched down in Texas last week.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is preparing for what government forecasters have called a potentially “extraordinary” 2024 Atlantic hurricane season beginning June 1.
(Reporting by Maria Caspani in New York; Additional reporting by Devika Nair and Jahnavi Nidumolu in Bengaluru; editing by David Evans and Diane Craft)
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