Most of the fatalities – eleven people – are found in the state of Missouri, where a tornado has ravaged, according to the state police on Saturday. A man is said to have lost his life when the whirlwind tore his house apart. Several people have also been injured.
Three people were killed and 29 injured in connection with a storm passing through Arkansas during the night.
Furthermore, three people died when they crashed their cars during a sandstorm in the city of Amarillo in northern Texas on Friday.
The storm system is moving eastward through the USA and, apart from deadly winds of hurricane strength, has caused hundreds of forest and terrain fires. There is a risk of powerful storms and hurricanes in parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida.
In Oklahoma, over 200 houses have been damaged or destroyed in fires, and around 70 hectares of land have burned in the state.
The extreme weather is estimated to affect an area where more than 100 million people live, from the Canadian border in the north to Texas in the south. According to experts, it is not unusual to have this type of bad weather in March.
The unique thing about this is its size and intensity, says Bill Bunting at the meteorological agency NWS office in Oklahoma.
