A series of powerful storms swept over the central and southern U.S. over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, killing at least 23 people and leaving a wide trail of destroyed homes, businesses and power outages.

The destructive storms caused deaths in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kentucky; and were just north of an oppressive, early season heat wave setting records from south Texas to Florida.

The National Weather Service bureau in Paducah, Ky., said it has called in a special survey team to help review Sunday’s I-69 tornado in western Kentucky, where the damage is known to have hit “high end” EF-3 rating. The tornado storm damage rating goes from 0 to 5, with 5 as the highest. There have already been three tornadoes this season that were rated in the EF-4 range.

 

Storm surveys also are in progress in Arkansas, the NWS bureau in Little Rock reported.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who earlier declared a state of emergency, said at a Monday press conference that five people had died in his state. One of them was a 54-year-old man who had a heart attack while cutting fallen trees in Caldwell County in western Kentucky, the governor’s office said.

There were also seven deaths in Cooke County, Texas, from a Saturday tornado that tore through a mobile home park, officials said, and eight deaths across Arkansas.

Two people died in Mayes County, Oklahoma, which is east of Tulsa, authorities said. The injured included guests at an outdoor wedding.

President Joe Biden sent condolences to the families of people who died. He said the Federal Emergency Management Agency is on the ground conducting damage assessments and he has contacted governors to see what federal support they might need.

 

Parts of 12 states were affected by power outages Monday, according to PowerOutage.us. The outages lingering into early Tuesday morning included 81,000 without power in Kentucky and 86,000 without power in Texas.

Another round of severe weather Tuesday morning in Texas has since spiked that statewide's number to over 650,000 customers without power.

2024 Tornado season

 

The statistics reported by NWS for the 2024 tornado season include:

  • 176 tornado watches were issued between Jan 1 and May 27.
  • Nearly every day from April 25 to May 26 has seen a tornado reported somewhere across the U.S – with May 10, 15, 18 and 27 being the exceptions.
  • 17 deaths attributed to tornadoes between Jan. 1 and May 13, which does not include fatalities from the Memorial Day weekend storms still in review.
  • April had the second-highest number of tornadoes on record in the country.
  • Three previous tornadoes have reached EF4 damage rating, one in Iowa and two in Oklahoma. The Kentucky storm is still in review.

Extreme Heat

 

In the meantime, the northern edge of a heat dome is affecting the weather in south Texas and Florida bringing temperatures typically seen at the height of summer into late May.

The heat index — a combination of air temperature and humidity to indicate how the heat feels to the human body — neared triple digits in parts of south Texas on Monday.

In Florida, Melbourne and Ft. Pierce set new daily record highs Monday. Both hit 98 F. Miami set a record high of 96 F on Sunday.

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