Between Friday evening and Saturday night at least 19 people died in a fort tornado which caused major damage in some counties in the central part of the Mississippi in the southeastern United States. Some witnesses heard by the US media tell that the tornado destroyed houses and buildings, uprooted trees and knocked down light poles in various parts of the state: a former mayor of Rolling Fork, which is located about a hundred kilometers north-east of the capital Jackson, he said in an interview with Fox Weather that much of the town is destroyed.
The National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning for several counties in Mississippi on Friday, and shortly before 9 p.m. reported on Twitter that a tornado had caused damage in both Rolling Fork and Silver City, a few dozen miles to the east. The tornado then moved into the northwest of the state with wind gusts up to 70 mph.
At least 13 people have died in Sharkey County, where Rolling Fork is located, he said ABC a county coroner. According to other coroners and police officers always heard from ABCfour others died in Humphreys County, where Silver City is located, and two in Monroe County, in the northeast of the state.
The damage in Rolling Fork, Mississippi is BAD. People are trapped, we need help here. pic.twitter.com/rPJ4KDjwvE
— Zachary Hall (@WxZachary) March 25, 2023
Tornadoes and severe storms that hit the southern United States Friday night caused power outages in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, two neighboring states further east.
According to the site poweroutage.us, at 3 am tonight (local time) more than 100 thousand people they were without electricity, most of them in Tennessee. Meanwhile, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency has announced that it has launched a series of relief operations.