Buildings are damaged along Gloucester Street after a tornado in Tupelo, Mississippi on April 28, 2014.
A dangerous storm system that spawned a chain of deadly tornadoes over three days flattened homes and businesses, killing at least 31 and forcing frightened residents in more than half a dozen states to take cover and left tens of thousands in the dark on Tuesday.
As the storm hopscotched across a large swath of the US, with 14 killed on Monday and 17 on Sunday in a band stretching from Oklahoma to Alabama. Forecasts showed the storm continuing to move east on Tuesday, with Georgia and Alabama residents waking to sirens, howling wind and pounding rain.
Others found their loved ones missing and their homes pulverized. In Louisville, Mississippi, firefighters picked through the remains of mobile homes, searching for three people unaccounted for after a tornado tore through. Twenty firefighters linked hands and waded through an area where wood frame homes had also been heavily damaged. Rescue workers stepped gingerly over downed power lines and trees that were snapped in half and stripped of branches.
The storm system is the latest onslaught of severe weather a day after a half-mile-(800-metre) wide tornado carved an 80-mile (128-kilometre) 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.
In Mississippi, officials say nine people died on Monday, seven of them in hard-hit Winston County. Two others died in separate instances of vehicles being blown off roadways.
The Winston County tornado caused water damage and carved holes in the roof of a medical centre, where the emergency room was evacuated on Monday.
One victim was a woman who died in the day care centre she owned in the town of Louisville, county Coroner Scott Gregory told The Associated Press late on Monday. Authorities were returning to the centre on Tuesday.
One seriously injured child was evacuated, said state Rep. Michael Evans, who said authorities don't think any other children were in the centre during the storm.
In Tupelo, a community of about 35,000 in northeastern Mississippi known as the birthplace of Elvis Presley, every building in a two-block area was damaged, officials on the scene said.
On Tuesday morning, a blanket of fog hung over the city as authorities switched from a search-and-rescue mission to clean-up duties.
In one residential neighbourhood, destroyed homes sat steps away from those left unscathed. Crews cleared trees tangled with power lines, fixed cracked roadway signs and removed debris from streets.
In Alabama, three people were reported dead, two in the northern part of the state and one in Tuscaloosa. There, officials say a University of Alabama student died Monday when he took shelter in a home's basement and a retaining wall collapsed on him.
In Kimberly, Alabama, a suspected tornado hit before midnight Monday, tearing the A-shaped roof off a church. 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.
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 April 27, 2011.
In southern Tennessee, two people were killed in a home when a suspected tornado hit on Monday night, authorities said. The winds destroyed several other homes as well as a middle school in the county that borders Alabama, Hall said.