A dangerous storm system that spawned a chain of deadly tornadoes over three days flattened homes and businesses, killing dozens and leaving tens of thousands of people across six states without power on Tuesday.  As the storm hopscotched across a large swath of the US, the overall death toll was at least 35, killed on Monday and Sunday in a band stretching from Oklahoma to Alabama. Forecasts showed the storm continuing to threaten residents in the Deep South on Tuesday afternoon and evening, with another round of howling winds, pounding rain, flash flooding and tornado conditions possible.  Tornadoes usually strike in the late afternoon and evening.  Some awoke on Tuesday to find their loved ones missing and their homes pulverised. In Louisville, a hardscrabble logging town hit by one of the storm's twisters, firefighters picked through the remains of mobile homes, and 20 of them linked hands to wade through debris. Rescue workers stepped gingerly over downed power lines and trees that were snapped in half and stripped of branches.  With water and roof damage, the small local hospital's emergency room was evacuated on Monday. "We thought we were going to be OK, then a guy came in and said, 'It's here right now,'" said Dr Michael Henry, head of the ER. "Then boom ... it blew through."  Just east of the hospital, a woman died at the daycare centre she had run for seven years, according to the county coroner. One seriously injured child was evacuated from the centre, said state representative Michael Evans, a Louisville Democrat, who is acting as a liaison for the county. The child's condition was not known on Tuesday. Evans said authorities do not think any other children were in the centre during the storm.  "No other parents have shown up to say, 'My child was at the daycare.' That's why we think the day care is fine," Evans said.  In Tupelo, crews turned from search-and-rescue efforts to cleanup in parts of the north-eastern Mississippi community on Tuesday. The buzzing sound of chain saws cut through the otherwise still, hazy morning. Massive oak trees, knocked over like children's toys, blocked some roads.  Neighbours helped one another cut away limbs. Residents, taken aback by the damage, said they prayed that more storms would not hit the city later on Tuesday.  Pam Montgomery, 54, walked with her grey scottish terrier, Ava, in the parking lot of St Luke's United Methodist church in her neighbourhood. "This does not even look like a place that I'm familiar with right now," Montgomery said. "You look down some of the streets and it doesn't even look like there is a street."  Abby Tucker, 27, described the feeling as surreal. "You see this in movies," she said. "You don't see it in your own backyard."  In Kimberly, Alabama, about 20 miles north of Birmingham, a suspected tornado hit at a crossroads before midnight on Monday, tearing the A-shaped roof off the town's Church of God. On Tuesday morning, the roof sat in a solid piece beside the red brick church.  Across the street, the cinderblock walls from an old fishing supply store were scattered around the gravel parking lot. The building's metal frame remained. Down the road, the fire department was flattened.  Tim Armstrong picked up pieces of splintered trees in his backyard. Armstrong, his wife and their two young daughters were home when the storm struck. He said they were listening to weather reports on television and heard an all-clear for their area.  "Three minutes later my mother-in-law calls, says there's a tornado in Morris," a nearby town, Armstrong said. "The power went out, and we went running to the middle of the house."  They heard the wind roaring and glass shattering as a tree flew through their front door. "Once I heard that, I knew something was pretty wrong. It was fast. It was so fast." The whole thing was over a minute later, he said.  In northern Alabama, the coroner's office confirmed two deaths in a twister that caused extensive damage west of the city of Athens. In Tuscaloosa, officials said a University of Alabama student died when he took shelter in the basement of a home near campus and a retaining wall collapsed on him.  The threat of dangerous weather jangled nerves a day after the third anniversary of a historic outbreak of more than 60 tornadoes that killed more than 250 people across Alabama on 27 April 2011.  Separately, the Limestone county commissioner, Bill Latimer, said he received reports of four deaths in the county from one of his workers. Neither the governor's office nor state emergency officials could immediately confirm those deaths.  In southern Tennessee, two people were killed in a home when a suspected tornado hit on Monday night, the Lincoln county emergency management director, Mike Hall, said. The winds destroyed several other homes as well as a middle school in the county that borders Alabama, Hall said.  The storm system is the latest onslaught of severe weather a day after a half-mile-wide tornado carved an 80-mile path of destruction through the suburbs of Little Rock, Arkansas, killing at least 15. Tornadoes or severe storms also killed one person each in Oklahoma and Iowa on Sunday.
Deep South still facing high winds, rain and flooding after storm system kills more than 30 and flattens buildings