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Communities from Texas to New York were picking up the pieces on Tuesday after a devastating holiday weekend brought tornadoes, storms and heavy rain that killed at least 24 people and left hundreds of thousands without power.
And this period of severe weather is still not over for Texas, which could see strong and damaging storms through Tuesday.
National Weather Service offices in Kentucky and Arkansas sent out teams to survey the wreckage. They found damage consistent with EF-3 strength tornados — the third highest rating on the Enhanced Fujita scale that measures tornado intensity, consistent with winds of up to 165 mph.
The office in Paducah, Kentucky, said it was consulting with experts internally to determine whether the tornado should be classified EF-4, the second highest rating, used when winds are between 166 and 200 mph.
Drone camera footage showed the sheer extent of the storm damage in Paragould, Arkansas, where homes had lost roofs and some structures were almost entirely demolished.
The weather service’s damage survey team in Louisville, Kentucky, confirmed two EF-1 tornadoes touched down on Sunday, with wind speeds of up to 90 mph.
While some power lines have been repaired, more than 200,000 energy customers were without power across Texas and the Midwest, with 82,000 connections lost in Kentucky, according to PowerOutage.us.
There were ground stops at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and Dallas Love Field Airport on Tuesday morning.
A ground stop at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport added to travel chaos over the holiday weekend, with airport delays topping 5,000 at one point Sunday night, according to FlightAware.com’s so-called Misery Map.
The Transport Security Administration said Friday was the single busiest day at U.S. airports on record, with three million passengers screened, beating the mark set at Thanksgiving last year. The AAA also estimated that some 38 million drivers took to the roads over the weekend, also a record.
Memorial Day brought severe, driving rains with very little visibility to Iowa, social media videos show. Hail stones the size of golf balls could be seen clattering off vehicles in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas, Texas.
Texas is bracing for “strong to severe” storms expected across much of state on Tuesday, potentially bringing significant damaging winds and large hail, the National Weather Service said in a forecast note.
“Merging cells and clusters of storms are also likely to contain intense rainfall rates capable of triggering several flash floods, particularly for areas just west of Dallas-Fort Worth and north of Austin,” the service said.
Thunderstorms and flash flooding could become a hazard from the Texas Panhandle to the Gulf Coast, the NWS note said.
A hail storm on Monday was so strong in Hurst, Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, that it had breached the roof of a Walmart, prompting shoppers to use nearby products to provide shelter, according to videos uploaded to Instagram.
The extreme heat that has seen much of Texas and the Gulf Coast reach three-figure temperatures in the last few days is finally softening, but the index — a measure of how hot it feels — could still reach 115 degrees on Tuesday, the weather service said.
Officials and neighbors in Jackson County, Colorado, where rancher Mike Morgan and 34 cattle were killed in a lightning strike on Monday, said he would be “extremely missed.”
“It’s not just the family. It’s that broader community in Jackson County,” rancher Janie Vanwinkle told NBC affiliate KUSA of Denver.
