Trail of dead cows lays bare the destruction of Southern tornadoes as another 11 die in powerful Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee twisters

• The three states were hit by a series of tornadoes on Monday evening
• At least 11 people are reported dead - seven in Mississippi, two confirmed in Alabama and two more in Tennessee
• A woman died earlier on Monday in Mississippi when her car either hydroplaned or blew off a road during the storm in Verona, south of Tupelo
• Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant had earlier declared a state of emergency in advance of the dangerous storms
• Twisters killed at least 15 people in Arkansas and Oklahoma on Sunday and the powerful storm system is set to continue to threatened large parts of the South until Wednesday

By Associated Press

Published: 23:36 GMT, 28 April 2014 | Updated: 16:35 GMT, 29 April 2014

The destruction being wreaked by a series of tornadoes across the south was laid bare on Monday by images of a horrifying trail of dead and injured farm animals tossed aside by twisters.

The images emerged from Arkansas as another series of tornadoes hit Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee on Monday night, part of a powerful storm system that has threatened large areas of the South with more twisters, severe thunderstorms, damaging hail and flash floods, authorities said.

As the storm swept across a large part of the U.S., the overall death toll was at least 28, with 11 killed in the South on Monday and 17 in the central region on Sunday.

On Tuesday morning, many woke to sirens, tornado warnings, damaged property and downed trees. Forecasts showed Georgia as the next likely target, with 89 counties under a tornado watch until 11 a.m. Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee were hit with the brunt of the storm Monday.

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Horrifying: dead and injured cattle lay in a field near Vilonia, Arkansas on Monday in the wake of a Sunday tornado. At least 28 people have now been killed by the storm system sweeping the U.S.

Awe-inspiring: A funnel cloud is seen crossing the town of Louisville, Mississippi, yesterday

Witness: Storm chaser video photographer Brad Mac films rotating clouds from a tornado storm in Louisville, MississippiFury: Lighting strikes from a TVS (tornadic vortex signature) storm in Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Torrent: A sheet of water cascades down the front of a building in Tuscaloosa, Alabama

A demolished car sits on North Gloster Street across from what remains of a shell gas station in Tupelo, Mississippi, after a tornado touched down on MondayDevastation: Residents go through the rubble of their home, one day after it was destroyed by a tornado near Vilonia, Arkansas, on Monday

A newly built school was destroyed by one of Sunday's tornados in this aerial photograph near Vilonia, Arkansas

Constance Lambert embraces her dog after finding it alive when returning to her destroyed home in Tupelo, Mississippi, on Monday

Tornados flattened homes and businesses, flipped trucks over on highways and injured numerous people in Mississippi and Alabama on Monday as a massive, dangerous storm system passed over several states in the South

Arc: Lighting strikes from a storm in Columbus, Mississippi  

In Mississippi, Republican state Sen. Giles Ward huddled in a bathroom with his wife, four other family members and their dog Monday as a tornado destroyed his two-story brick house and flipped his son-in-law's SUV upside down onto the patio in Louisville.

'For about 30 seconds, it was unbelievable,' Ward said. 'It's about as awful as anything we've gone through.'

The dangerous weather jangled nerves a day after the three-year anniversary of a historic outbreak of more than 60 tornadoes that killed more than 250 people across Alabama on April 27, 2011.

More...

• Midwest miracle: Dramatic video shows the moment a woman, her elderly parents and dog were pulled alive from their home that was blown to pieces by Arkansas tornado
• Chilling drone footage shows devastating wreckage left by deadly Arkansas tornado just moments after massive storm hit
• At least 16 dead after tornadoes cause devastation across central states as forecasters warn another HUNDRED twisters could hit the area this week
• Hope among the rubble: Families and their beloved pets rescued from the wreckage of their storm-hit homes

Weather satellites showed tumultuous clouds arcing across much of the South over the course of the day Monday.

Aftermath: William Higgins sits on a stump outside his grandfather's house after it was destroyed by a tornado yesterday

People walk down Green Street to the corner of North Gloster Street after a tornado went through Tupelo, Mississippi

Gutted: The living room of a house destroyed by a tornado that tore through Mayflower, Arkansas

An 18-wheeler and numerous strips of sheet metal block the southbound lanes of U.S. 49 in Richland, Mississippi

Looming: A massive wedge tornado bears down on the city of Tupelo 

The system is the latest onslaught of severe weather a day after a half-mile-wide tornado carved an 80-mile path of destruction through the suburbs of Little Rock, Arkansas, killing at least 15. Tornadoes or severe storms also killed one person each in Oklahoma and Iowa on Sunday.

One victim was a woman who died in the day care centre she owned in Louisville, county Coroner Scott Gregory told The Associated Press late Monday. Authorities were returning to the centre Tuesday.

One seriously injured child was evacuated, said state Rep. Michael Evans, who said authorities don't think any other children were in the centre during the storm.

It was unclear if any children were in the day care centre at the time, said William McCully, acting spokesman for the Winston County Emergency Management Agency.

Earlier Monday, emergency officials attending a news conference with Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said seven people had been killed statewide. State Director of Health Protection Jim Craig said officials were working with coroners to confirm the total. It was unclear if the deaths in Winston County were included in that tally.

Carnage: A man surveys the damage to South Lincoln Elementary School after strong winds ripped through the area

Asunder: A large tornado jumped Mississippi Highway 25 south of Louisville, Mississippi, causing this scene of carnage before hitting the city of Louisville

Grim task: Emergency personnel search the remains of several mobile homes for survivors in Louisville, Mississippi

Continuing fears: Many severe weather warnings remain in place across the South

Collapse: A motel, left, and a restaurant both show damage sustained from a tornado in Tupelo

Ripped up: Uprooted trees are pictured from above after a tornado hit Vilonia, Arkansas

An American flag is mounted on mobile home debris as a searcher looks through the remains of several mobile homes in Louisville, Mississippi

In southern Tennessee, two people were killed in a home when a suspected tornado hit Monday night, Lincoln County Emergency Management Director Mike Hall said. The winds destroyed several other homes as well as a middle school in the county that borders Alabama, Hall said.

Along Mississippi Highway 397 on the eastern edge of Louisville early Tuesday, firefighters could be seen picking through the remains of an unidentified number of pulverized mobile homes. Lt. Brian Arnett of the Starkville Fire Department said they were searching for three people who were unaccounted for.

In Kimberly, Alabama, a suspected tornado hit before midnight Monday, tearing the A-shaped roof off a church. On Tuesday morning, the roof sat in a solid piece beside the red brick church.

Across the street, the cinderblock walls from an old fishing supply store were scattered around the gravel parking lot. The building's metal frame remained. Down the road, the fire department was flattened.

Tim Armstrong picked up pieces of splintered trees in his backyard. Armstrong, his wife and their two young daughters were home when the storm struck. He said they were listening to weather reports on television and heard an all-clear for their area.

'Three minutes later my mother-in-law calls, says there's a tornado in Morris,' a nearby town, Armstrong said. 'The power went out, and we went running to the middle of the house.'
They heard the wind roaring and glass shattering as a tree flew through their front door. 'Once I heard that, I knew something was pretty wrong. It was fast. It was so fast.'
The whole thing was over a minute later, he said.

About 100 yards away, 20 firefighters linked hands and waded through an area where woodframe homes had been heavily damaged.

Trees in Louisville had been snapped in half and stripped of their branches, while sheet metal had twisted itself around road signs and tree trunks. Rescue workers stepped gingerly over downed power lines.

The tornado in Louisville also caused water damage and carved holes in the roof of the Winston Medical Center, according to an Associated Press reporter at the centre.

Defiance: A U.S. flag sticks out the window of a damaged hot rod car in a suburban area after a tornado near Vilonia, Arkansas

Pride: Justin Shaw, left, helps Nick Conway erect a make-shift flag pole at his home that was destroyed in Vilonia

VICTIMS OF NATURE'S FURY: THE STORIES OF THOSE LOST TO THE STORM

The fierce tornado that swept through Arkansas killed more than a dozen people, including two sisters and their father, part of a large family that had gathered for a quiet evening before the storm drove them to seek shelter under a staircase.

'You could just see the wind was just crazy,' Emily Tittle, 17, said Monday as she searched for keepsakes to save in the ruins of her family's rural home in the rolling hills west of Little Rock. In a pile, she and others helped her gather family photos in a plastic, pink tray.

Tittle said she, her eight siblings and her parents scurried for safety under the stairs in the two-story house, but only half of them made it before the walls were obliterated by the twister that left just the foundation behind.

Her father, Rob Tittle, and two sisters, Tori, 20, and Rebekah, 14, were killed. All six of her other siblings were taken to hospitals, three of whom have since been released.

She said she planned to meet up with her mother who is still alive later in the day, but said she hadn't heard from her since the night before.

One of her neighbors, Jon Zieske, found a tooth when he was collecting photos. Shelly Linn, for years a mail carrier in the area, was pitching in, hoping to help. Turning to Tittle amid Monday's scavenge, Linn sought guidance.

'Baby girl, what do you want me to do?' Linn asked the teenager, whose gray sweatpants, short-sleeved Snoopy T-shirt and sneakers were among her now-few possessions.

Pausing, Tittle surveyed the devastation.

'I don't know if we can find anything,' she said.

Daniel Wassom was huddled in a hallway of a Vilonia home during the storm with his wife, Suzanne, and daughters Lorelei, five, and Sydney, seven, neighbors and a relative said.

Suzanne Wassom even posted on Facebook about it. At the height of the tornado, a large piece of lumber crashed toward the family. Dan Wassom, 31, who served in the Air Force, shielded Lorelei, taking the brunt of the blow to his neck, said Carol Arnett, Dan Wassom's grandmother.

It was a fatal blow. Lorelei suffered a shoulder injury and was hospitalized. Suzanne Wassom was hospitalized with a concussion, her aunt, Sherry Madden, said.

Friends and family sift through debris at the home of Daniel Wassom after his house was destroyed by a tornado yesterday. He died trying to shield a family member

'Dan always put his family first,' Arnett said, wiping away tears. 'They're just good people. They love God and their children.'

The home was levelled. Arnett had driven to Vilonia on Monday from her home in Wagner, Oklahoma, to help find mementos in the debris field that used to be the family home. Neighbors Nicholas and Brittany White helped, finding Suzanne Wassom's pocket purse and other treasured items.

'He'd do anything for anybody,' Nicholas White said of Dan Wassom.

Daniel and April Smith, both working as recruiters of truck drivers, moved to Vilonia last fall, focusing on the shiny new intermediate school that their two boys could one day attend.

On Sunday, their sons, third-grader Cameron Smith and first-grader Tyler Smith, were killed when the tornado destroyed the family's home.

Daniel and April Smith were seriously injured.

'It's a beautiful place to live,' Eric Hancock, a family friend who often baby-sat the boys, said Monday of Vilonia, some 25 miles from the Smiths' previous home in Sherwood, Arkansas.

'They found a great house at a reasonable price, and they were looking for schools and things. They had just built that new one. It just seemed right.'

Tyler was seven. Hancock, who was with the boys' parents, said Cameron was 9, though the Faulkner County coroner listed the boy's age as eight.

Hancock said both boys loved baseball, fishing and God.

Cameron also enjoyed hunting, getting his first crack at it last October during deer season, Hancock said. Cameron fired at two different deer but missed, his nerves getting the best of him.

Tyler, Hancock said, 'was a pistol, with more energy than any 16 people I know.'

'He was just a light in the world,' he said.

Rick and Cheryl Ross of Quapaw, Oklahoma, are trying to piece their lives together after seeing their second home destroyed by nature's fury.
Their first was levelled in the May 2008 tornado in Picher, less than six miles away, so they moved to Quapaw.
Rick told KJRH: 'There was no time. It just hit. I wanted to go out to the (storm) cellar.
'And that's when I seen everything start to explode out here. So then I just shoved her down, got on top of her and that was it.'
Mrs Ross added: 'He offered himself so that I wouldn't be hurt. We're truly blessed.'

Ruth Bennett died clutching the last child left at her day care centre, as a tornado wiped her business off its foundation, flinging it into the backyard of a neighboring home.
Bennett's niece, Panisha Lockett, said all but the one child had been picked up from Ruth's Child Care Center before the storm hit. She said the 4-year-old had been coming to the centre since she was a baby. The child, who has not been identified, was transported to a Jackson hospital. Her condition was not known.
Lockett said Bennett had been running her own child care centre for seven years.
'She just wants to help children and run her own business,' Lockett said. 'I left her (Bennett) her and I wish I had stayed because she asked me to stay with her.'

The path of a tornado is seen in this aerial image near Vilonia, Arkansas: A ferocious storm system caused a twister in Mississippi and threatened tens of millions of people across the U.S. Southeast on Monday, a day after it spawned tornadoes that killed 16 people and tossed cars like toys in Arkansas and other states

Esmeralda, left and Craig Stanford help a friend clean up his North Gloster Street Texaco gas station and quick stop in Tupelo, Miss, on Monday

Waking up to wreckage: Seventeen year-old Deanna Locke and her siblings including, from left, Charlotte, 13; Drew, 9; and Trinity, 11; examine a downed tree across the street from their home in Tupelo, Mississippi on April 28

Path of destruction: This map highlights the path tornadoes that hit several states on Sunday took

Storm chaser Brad Mack points out a TVS (tornadic vortex signature) tornado storm on the radar going over his hotel in Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Severe damage: destroyed wood can be seen on piled-up Tupelo cars in this photograph

Tossed up: A van was seen on top of other cars in the wake of tornado damage in Tupelo

Several injuries were reported along with extensive damage in the northern Mississippi city of Tupelo, pictured

Responding: Tupelo police are picured in the city responding to the storm's damage. It is not clear how many people had been injured because relief efforts are still underway

There were about 15 patients in hospital rooms and eight or nine in the emergency room, where evacuations were underway.

'We thought we were going to be OK then a guy came in and said, "It's here right now",' said Dr. Michael Henry, head of the emergency room. 'Then boom ... it blew through.'

One of the deaths in Mississippi involved a woman who was killed when her car either hydroplaned or was blown off a road during the storm in Verona, south of Tupelo, said Lee County Coroner Carolyn Gillentine Green.

In northern Alabama, the coroner's office confirmed two deaths Monday in a twister that caused extensive damage west of the city of Athens, said Limestone County Emergency Director Rita White. White said more victims could be trapped in the wreckage of damaged buildings, but rescuers could not reach some areas because of downed power lines.

Separately, Limestone Commissioner Bill Latimer said he received reports of four deaths in the county from one of his workers. Neither the governor's office nor state emergency officials could immediately confirm those deaths.

Emotional: Sherry Lee, left, and her daughter-in-law Amanda Lee react on April 28 after finding family photos among the ruins of Sherry Lee's Vilonia home in the wake of the twister

Wreckage: Piles of debris are seen in all that's left to homes located off Cemetery Street in Vilonia, Arkansas after the tornado struck down

Disaster: Dino McLaughlin crawls over a pile of debris which is all that's left of his friends storage unit in Vilonia

No fatalities so far have been reported in Tupelo, though there have been others in Arkansas and Oklahoma

Chaos: A travel trailer sits inn the rubble of a house in Mayflower, Arkansas on April 28

Damage shows the path of a tornado through Quapaw, Oklahoma on April 28

Residents and friends sift through debris after a tornado struck the area on Monday in Vilonia, Arkansas

Numerous watches and warnings were still active in Alabama, with forecasters warning the severe weather could continue all night.

In Tupelo, Mississippi., a community of about 35,000 in northeastern Mississippi, every building in a two-block area south of U.S. Highway 78 suffered damage, officials told a reporter on the scene.

Some buildings had their roofs sheared off, while power lines had been knocked down completely or bent at 45-degree angles. Road crews were using heavy machinery to clear off other streets.

The Northeast Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo had received 30 patients as of Monday night, four of whom were being admitted with non-life-threatening injuries, said centre spokeswoman Deborah Pugh. Pugh said the other 26 patients were treated for minor injuries and released.

Bryant declared a state of emergency Monday in advance of the storms, which sent emergency officials rushing to put plans in place.

With the wind howling outside and rain blowing sideways, Monica Foster rode out a tornado warning with her two daughters, ages 10 and 12, inside a gas station near Fayette, Ala. One of the girls cried as the three huddled with a station employee in a storage area beside a walk-in cooler.

Foster, who was returning home to Lynn on rural roads after a funeral in Tuscaloosa, said she typically would have kept driving through the deluge.

'I wouldn't have pulled in if I didn't have the two girls,' she said.

Wreckage: Books are stacked on a water heater after a strong tornado went through the area on April 27 for the second time in three years on April 28, 2014 in Vilonia, Arkansas

Devastation: Tornado damage inside the Mayflower R.V. Park is seen the day after a tornado struck in Mayflower, Arkansas, USA. At least 15 people have been killed in the outbreak of tornados in Arkansas and Oklahoma, according to authorities

Piles of mangled cars and destroyed homes sit along Aspen Creek Drive in the Parkwood Neighborhood off Naylor Road in Vilonia, Arkansas on April 28

Flattened: A row of lightly damages houses, top, face destroyed homes in a Vilonia, Arkansas, neighborhood on April 28

Lost: Bob Van Byssum walks through his home in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Monday April 28

In Memphis, Tennessee, officials declared a state of emergency in a county southwest of Nashville because of flash flooding.

Authorities urged people there to seek higher ground after several homes and some business were flooded in Maury County and officials reported worries some school buses couldn't get schoolchildren home over swamped roads.

'If it's unsafe certainly the drivers are not going to chance it,' said a Maury County emergency official, Mark Blackwood, said of the school buses.

The same storm system was heading from Mississippi toward the Alabama line late on Monday.

The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch for most of north Alabama, and the entire state was under a flash flood watch. Tornado warnings began popping up on weather maps in Alabama as soon as storms crossed the Mississippi state line on Monday afternoon.

More than 50 school systems shut down early in Alabama's northern half as a precaution against having children and workers on the road in buses and cars when the storms arrived. Several cities closed municipal offices early.

More than a hundred tornadoes are set to hit the Midwest and the South this week as part of a powerful storm system that is impacting on the Midwest and the South

Search: Mayflower RV employee Andrea Jones crouches inside the crushed remains of an RV that belonged to two of her friends searching for anything she might save for them after a tornado destroyed the RV park in Mayflower, Arkansas, on Monday April 28

Clean up: volunteers begin clean up following yesterday's tornado in Quapaw, Oklahoma on Monday, April 28

Hope: Rescue workers and volunteers stand amid debris of homes, one day after they were destroyed by a tornado in Vilonia, Arkansas on April 28

Spoiled: Bottles of condiments lie inside a refrigerator door on the grounds of a destroyed house a day after a tornado hit the town of Vilonia, Arkansas on April 28

Recovery: Justin Shaw, left, helps Nick Conway erect a flag pole at his home that was destroyed by a tornado on April 28 in Vilonia, Arkansas

Embrace: Residents and friends sift through debris after a tornado struck the area on April 28 in Vilonia, Arkansas

Starting over: Homes and businesses are wrecked in downtown Vilonia, Arkansas. The most powerful twister this year carved an 80-mile path of destruction through suburbs north of the state capital of Little Rock, killing at least 16 people

Residents survey the damage in a residential neighborhood in Quapaw, Okla., after it was struck by a tornado on Sunday evening

Messed up: A trail of debris, bottom, leads along the path of a tornado-devastated neighborhood in Vilonia, Arkansas

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2615451/Arkansas-tornado-leaves-horrifying-trail-dead-injured-farm-animals-just-tornado-blows-Mississippi-no-fatalities.html#ixzz30IP909c4