Powerful storms in the southern U.S. brought tornadoes and floods to multiple states, leaving at least two people dead and thousands without power.
A storm system stretching from east Texas to Georgia brought severe weather Tuesday night into early Wednesday.
The National Weather Service confirmed more than 20 tornadoes across the region, CBS News reported.
The NWS Storm Prediction Center said it had received 29 tornado reports, 40 severe wind reports and 33 severe hail reports across seven states. Local NWS offices will conduct damage surveys over the coming days to determine tornado intensity, the center said.
Two people were killed and at least one other was injured when a tornado hit near Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery County Emergency Management Director Christina Thornton told CNN.
"Thanks to the heroic efforts of our first responders many other lives were saved. We pray for our community as we mourn this tragic loss of lives," Thornton said.
In Louisiana, at least two people were injured in a reported tornado strike in Caldwell Parish, per CBS. Several homes were also destroyed.
At one point, an estimated 25 million people in nine states were under severe weather threats. Forecasters warned that tornados "with EF3+ damage potential" were possible, as well as flash flooding and tennis ball-sized hail. Tornados of that magnitude can produce wind gusts of up to 165 mph.
Cities in several states reported damage to homes and neighborhoods, downed trees and power lines, and limbs and other debris blocking roads. Other areas saw several inches of rain that led to localized flooding.
The storms left thousands without power. According to PowerOutage.us, more than 41,000 homes and businesses in Alabama were knocked offline, over 22,000 outages were reported across Texas, more than 13,000 were without power in Mississippi and roughly 6,000 in both Georgia and Louisiana had no electricity early Wednesday.
The severe weather was expected to continue through midday Wednesday as the thunderstorms moved into the Florida Panhandle and across southern Georgia.
The Storm Prediction Center said the storms would gradually weaken as they continued to move and that the overall severe threat is expected to remain low for Florida and Georgia, though locally gusty winds will remain possible.
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