At least eight people died over the weekend after severe weather spawned tornadoes, flooding and thunderstorms across much of the South.
Two young children died in Texas after a tree fell on a car they were riding in, according to the local sheriff. A woman died after a suspected twister tore through an outdoor event at the Caddo Mounds State Historic Site. The sheriff’s office from Houston County told KLTV that one woman was found dead near her home on Highway 21 West.
Dozens of others were also injured when a tornado touched down near the town of Franklin.
Winds as strong as 140 mph overturned some mobile homes, The Dallas Morning News reported.
Three people were killed in Louisiana, two by floodwaters and a third hit by a car while trying to clear trees that fell during a storm, per The Associated Press.
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) declared a state of emergency on Sunday for several counties. He said one elderly man died when a tree fell on his trailer and more than 26,000 homes were without power. A tornado also touched down in the state.
″It could have been much worse,” Bryant said during a news conference on Sunday. “The conditions of that storm appeared to be very violent ... disastrous conditions could have occurred.”
Tornado watches were issued across a large swath of the south, stretching from West Virginia to North Carolina and up to Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York, according to Reuters. Bob Oravec, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, said more than 100 million people were at risk of extreme weather throughout the weekend and into Monday morning.