Following a storm system that delivered tornadoes and thunderstorms to the midwest and southeast on Sunday, one person died in Indiana and two people died in Arkansas.
Following a string of severe storms that moved east across the country, hundreds of thousands of people are without power from Louisiana to Michigan.
The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a tornado watch for the majority of Indiana, as well as smaller portions of Michigan and Ohio, on Sunday afternoon.
The storm system was also expected to bring damaging winds and ‘very large hail’ to an even greater area across the Midwest, stretching across Ohio into parts of northern Kentucky.
Around 4.30pm, a tornado struck a two-storey log cabin in rural Martin County, Indiana, killing one occupant and seriously injuring a second, who was airlifted to a local hospital.
Martin County Emergency Management Director Cameron Wolf described the storm damage as both ‘random’ and ‘widespread’ in the rural parts of the county.
Closer to Indianapolis, officials reported damage from fallen trees and large pieces of hail.
Another tornado struck Johnson County, causing damage to about 75 houses in the city of Bargersville. No deaths or injuries have been reported from the twister as of Monday morning.
‘This is a very dangerous scene for the area,’ Bargersville Fire Chief Erik Funkhouser said at a news conference. ‘We have power lines that are down all throughout that 3-mile area.’
Meanwhile in the southeast, severe storms swept through parts of Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
In Arkansas, falling trees killed two people and injured a third in the town of Carlisle, located about 35 miles east of the state capital in Little Rock.
Large portions of both Arkansas and Tennessee also lost power, with over 100,000 customers in each state reporting outages on Monday.