Spring-like storms kill at least 6 across South

Mulester Johnson, 67, told the AP that he was inside his house in Holly Springs when the storm struck.

Almost 70 million people were forecast to be in the path of the storms Wednesday night, ABC said.

Authorities say teams of searchers are looking for three people still missing in MS after Wednesday’s tornadoes.

The youngest victim of the severe weather was a 7-year-old in Holly Springs, Mississippi, who was killed in a van on Highway 7 as storms swept through the town, according to Marshall County Coroner James Anderson.

Flynn said another team was searching for the missing person in Tippah County, just southeast of Benton.

At least eight people were killed in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas as spring-like storms mixed with unseasonably warm weather and spawned rare Christmastime tornadoes in the South. Emergency officials blamed the severe weather for injuring scores of others Wednesday and destroying dozens of cars, homes and businesses.

At least 20 twisters have been reported.

On Wednesday, two days before Christmas, the South woke up to tornado warnings and damage.

Dozens of homes in the state were destroyed and small planes were overturned at an airport in Clarksdale.

Pope County, Arkansas, Sheriff Shane Jones said 18-year-old Michaela Remus was killed when a tree crashed into her bedroom Wednesday.

The National Weather Service said a single “exceptionally long-track, violent tornado”, possibly the longest on record, may have been on the ground for some 150 miles, causing the most damage.

At least three people in northern MS were killed in the severe weather outbreak, according to the state’s Emergency Management Agency.

There were reports of major damage to buildings in Sardis, about 45 miles east of Clarksdale, and in Holly Springs, more than 90 minutes to the northeast.

Two people were killed in Perry County, Tennessee, southwest of Nashville. An 18-year-old woman and an 18-month toddler were inside.

The calendar says it’s almost Christmas, but the damage looks more like spring.

Pieces of metal tangled in drooping power lines, dangling precariously alongside the road.

More than four inches of rain is expected through Friday, the National Weather Service said.

The biggest threat for tornadoes was in a region of 3.7 million people in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas and parts of Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky, according to the national Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma.

This low pressure area has promoted warm southerly winds from the tropics over eastern states while drawing in cold air to the west. Meanwhile, storms have occurred on the boundary of these two “air masses” where warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico has condensed out as torrential rain.