A man looks at a damaged car after a tornado struck the day before, Sunday, May 26, 2024, in Valley View, Texas. Powerful storms caused widespread damage in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas on Sunday, destroying homes and destroying a truck stop where drivers took shelter amid the latest deadly weather to hit the central United States. .
Julio Cortez/AP
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Julio Cortez/AP
As the Memorial Day weekend comes to an end, large swaths of the eastern United States are bracing for severe weather. The deadly long weekend of storms also left hundreds of thousands of people without power in the South and disrupted holiday travel at busy airports in the Northeast.
Severe storms are expected to extend from Alabama to upstate New York Monday night, according to the National Weather Service. Forecasters said the storm could cause heavy rainfall across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic and could trigger flash flooding. Hail, strong winds and tornadoes are also possible from northeastern Maryland to New York’s Catskill Mountains, according to the National Weather Service.
Monday’s severe weather threat comes on the heels of a series of powerful and deadly storms that battered parts of the South and Midwest over the holiday weekend. Severe weather killed at least 23 people in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kentucky.
A deadly tornado also hit Iowa earlier this week.
At a news conference on Monday, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said four people died in four different counties as storms swept through much of the state on Sunday. Late Monday, Beshear confirmed a fifth storm-related death.
The small community of Charleston in southwestern Kentucky took a direct hit from the tornado, officials said.
Beshear said the tornado appeared to have traveled 40 miles above the ground.
“It could have been worse,” Beshear said of this weekend’s storm. “Kentucky people are very weather aware with everything we go through.”
East of Charleston, parts of Hopkins County, Kentucky, also suffered damage Sunday night. In 2021, western Kentucky, including multiple communities in Hopkins County, was hit by a series of devastating tornadoes that killed 81 people.
“A lot of people were just getting back to their normal lives and then this happened,” Hopkins County Emergency Management Director Nick Bailey was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. “Pretty much in the same place, same house and everything.”
According to the website Poweroutage.us, hundreds of thousands of people were without power on Monday. As of 5:30 p.m. ET, more than 120,000 customers in Kentucky were without power, according to the website. Data shows that Arkansas and West Virginia each have more than 40,000 customers without power.
The White House said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was on the scene conducting damage assessments with state and local authorities. President Biden has directed federal agencies to provide support as needed.
Weekend storms also caused disruptions to holiday travel.
As of 5:30 p.m. Monday, more than 400 U.S. flights were canceled and more than 5,200 were delayed, according to flight tracking website Flight Aware. New York’s LaGuardia Airport and New Jersey’s Newark Liberty Airport were the most affected by delays and cancellations.
