Authorities warned that power outages in Texas could last for days, with hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses still without power from the grid after another night of severe weather.
A teenager died at a construction site on Tuesday after a half-built house collapsed during a storm.
Texas was among the states earlier hit by deadly storms and tornadoes over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, killing at least 24 people.
Forecasters said hail, damaging winds and flash flooding were still possible across the region, Kansas and eastern Colorado.
Meanwhile, “unusually high temperatures” continue to affect southern parts of the state and southern Florida, according to the latest update from the National Weather Service (NWS) on Wednesday morning. Temperatures are also expected to rise in parts of the Southwest and California.
Dallas County has issued a disaster declaration during the Texas storm. Flooding streets and downed trees and power lines were reported in Dallas.
Weather-related fires destroyed homes and a historic church in or near the city, and massive disruptions to travel were reported, including hundreds of flight cancellations at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Local officials warned that restoring power could take some time.
“Unfortunately, this is going to be a multi-day power outage situation,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said Tuesday.
In Texas alone, about 500,000 customers were without power, according to monitoring website Poweroutage.us, up from a previous peak of more than 1 million.
A 16-year-old teen died when a home under construction collapsed during the storm, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office announced Tuesday night.
Most of the workers on site were able to escape safely when they noticed the structure began to move – except for the teenager.
Texas earlier suffered devastating weekend storms that killed several people, injured more than 100 people and damaged or destroyed many homes in the state.
Storm-related deaths also occurred in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Alabama and Kentucky. In the latter case, there’s the story of a man whose home was flattened by a tornado for the second time in three years.
“This time, everything we had is gone,” Devin Johnson told ABC News.
Severe weather continues in parts of the United States, with forecasters warning that the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, which begins next month, could be “extraordinary.”
Record sea surface temperatures are partly to blame, as are possible changes in regional weather patterns.
While there is no evidence that climate change is producing more hurricanes, it is making the strongest hurricanes more likely to occur and bring heavier rainfall.
