Tornadoes Kill 14 in US South; East Sees Record Warmth

The calendar says it’s almost Christmas, but the damage looks more like spring. Exactly a year ago, tornadoes hit MS, killing five people and injuring dozens.

The violent weather is believed to be a result of unseasonably warm weather across the U.S., with such storms normally expected in spring rather than at Christmas.

The powerful storms that lashed the southeastern United States this week, at the start of Christmas vacations, left at least 15 people dead, local media reported.

Nicholas Garbacz, disaster program manager for the American Red Cross of North Mississippi, said members of the Marine Corps brought donated toys to a center in Holly Springs for children whose families were hit hard by the storms.

“Just like every year, it depends on where you are to see if your stocking is stuffed or the Grinch is alive”, GasBuddy senior petroleum analyst Patrick DeHaan told ABC News Friday.

Another person was killed in Arkansas.

“Santa brought us a good one, didn’t he?” said Bobby Watkins in rural Benton County, Mississippi.

David Logan, the emergency management director of Barbour County, said: “Most of what we are trying to do is keep them off them county roads”. The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said the deceased were a 19-year-old female and two 22-year-old males, while verifying that the deaths were related to the adverse weather conditions. “It was yellow and it was roaring, lightning just continually, and it was making a awful noise”, she said.

He said seven people were killed there and one person was missing. A large tornado tore a 160-kilometers path through northern MS, demolishing or heavily damaging dozens of homes and other buildings in a six-county area before plowing into western Tennessee. “They’re not manufactured to withstand that kind of wind speed, so they become nearly like little missiles”.

“The way that she was laying actually shielded her sister”, he said.

A teenager died when a tree fell on a house in Atkins, Arkansas.

“It’s bad that this happened, especially at Christmas”, Pope County Sheriff Shane Jones told the AP.

Tornadoes are still possible, with severe storms predicted for Sunday night through Monday.

On the other side of Texas and including much of New Mexico, a snowstorm accompanied by plunging temperatures was expected to leave up to 16 inches of snow through Sunday evening, according to NWS meteorologist Brendon Rubin-Oster in College Park, Maryland.

Record highs already have been recorded early on Christmas Eve in Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse as temperatures top 60 degrees in each city.