Authorities said Monday that an 84-year-old man in an Amish buggy in Indiana was killed when a tree fell on a van in Michigan, killing three children during a violent weekend storm that ravaged the area.
Meanwhile, areas of the Southeastern United States saw an increase in potentially hazardous weather.
Extreme winds and freezing rain over the weekend proved too strong for trees and power lines, and utilities in Michigan were slowly restoring electricity, however by Monday afternoon, 276,000 outages were still present, according to poweroutage.us. Outages in Wisconsin and Indiana had been reduced to about 80,000.
A 2-year-old girl, her 4-year-old brother, and an 11-year-old girl who was their cousin were killed by the fallen tree in Kalamazoo County.
About 130 miles (209 kilometers) west of Detroit on Sunday, three additional passengers in the van were hurt.
Sheriff Richard Fuller told reporters, “The family could not have avoided this,” adding that the tree hit the passenger compartment where the kids were seated.
“It was such a large tree that it came across two lanes of traffic and out the other side of the vehicle for about 12 more feet,” according to the sheriff.
At the time, the region was under a severe thunderstorm warning, one of several that southern Michigan would experience on Sunday.
Lonnie Yoder was killed when an Amish buggy in Middlebury, Indiana, overturned due to strong winds around the same time, according to authorities.
Due to Saturday’s freezing rain, Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula was still in disarray on Monday, with hundreds of trees toppled. People were advised by police to avoid the roads. Like the rest of Alpena County, the Alpena News said that it was unable to publish a newspaper due to a lack of electricity.
The 5-mile (8-kilometer) Mackinac Bridge, which connects the two peninsulas of Michigan, was closed due to the risk of cars being struck by thick ice that could fall from the towers and cables.
According to the Porter County sheriff’s office, detectives in Valparaiso, Indiana, think that a tractor-trailer was blown over by strong crosswinds on Sunday afternoon, killing the driver at Pratt Industries’ site.
The body of 34-year-old Ontario, Canada resident Jagbir Singh was discovered outside the passenger compartment.
There were no reported injuries, however a warehouse near Elkhart, Indiana, was destroyed.
Authorities in southwest Ohio said that Sunday night’s winds flipped campers, damaged homes, and toppled a church steeple. There were no reported injuries. The National Weather Service reported at least four tornadoes.
The weather agency verified on the social media site X that at least three tornadoes struck Kentucky on Sunday. One struck north-central Kentucky’s Spencer County, knocking off the roof of at least one barn.
Several Tennessee counties, including Maury and Humphreys, reported storm damage. Chris Davis, the sheriff for Humphreys area, reported damage throughout the area, including a house’s roof being torn off. Despite being locked inside, the homeowners were unharmed.
At least four tornadoes were reported in middle Tennessee on Monday, according to the National Weather Service’s Facebook page.
According to the National Weather Service, clusters of thunderstorms with strong to severe wind gusts and possibly a few tornadoes were moving across a large portion of the Southeast on Monday.
Severe Storms Sweep Through Midwest, Killing 7 and Stranding Hundreds of Thousands Without Power
A storm in Dothan, Alabama, forced a portion of the school’s gymnasium roof to collapse, injuring five kids.
Eleven states—from northeast Texas to Arkansas and all the way to the western border of West Virginia—have issued flood watches for Wednesday through Sunday.
Rainfall of up to 1 foot (30.5 cm) in certain places “is not out of the question,” the meteorological agency warned. It is anticipated that this will be a high-end event with potentially fatal flooding.
This information has been sourced from AP News.
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