At least five dead after severe weather wallops US

Written by ABC Audio. All rights reserved. on January 10, 2024

(NEW YORK) — Severe weather across the United States on Tuesday has left at least five people dead, according to local authorities, and the latest forecast shows more winter storms are on the way.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office in Wisconsin said one person was killed in a car crash due to poor road conditions amid snowfall on Tuesday morning.

Another car crash killed a 35-year-old woman in Webber Township, Michigan, on Tuesday afternoon, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, which urged residents to stay home that day due to “extremely slushy and treacherous” road conditions.

In Cottonwood, Alabama, an 81-year-old woman was killed on Tuesday morning when a possible tornado blew her mobile home over multiple times while she was inside, according to the Houston County Medical Examiner and Coroner.

Another person was killed on Tuesday when severe weather damaged multiple residences at a mobile home park in Claremont, North Carolina, and the National Weather Service is evaluating where a tornado occurred in the area, according to the Catawba County Government.

In Jonesboro, Georgia, a tree fell on the windshield of a car on Tuesday, killing the driver, according to the Clayton County Police Department.

Since Monday, at least 23 tornadoes have been reported in six states — Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina, according to the National Weather Service. Many of them occurred in Florida’s Panhandle on Monday night and Tuesday morning as a major storm system moved across the country. That same system brought winds as high as 65 miles per hour to the Northeast and up to 15 inches of snow to the Midwest.

Hundreds of thousands of customers were without power nationwide on Wednesday morning, particularly in the northeastern states of New York and Pennsylvania, according to data collected by PowerOutage.us.

While the worst of those storms moves out of the Northeast on Wednesday, another cross-country weather system is in the forecast for this week and has already dumped as many as 30 inches of snow in the Pacific Northwest.

The system is expected to move through the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada mountain range on Wednesday and Thursday, leaving several feet of snow, before swinging east and producing another severe weather outbreak from Texas to the Carolinas, with the possibility of tornadoes.

Another major snowstorm is expected in the north with up to a foot of snowfall from Nebraska to Michigan.

Storms are forecast to move into the Northeast on Friday night and Saturday morning, bringing more heavy rain and strong winds with the potential for flooding.