Thousands of homes and businesses were without power Tuesday as severe weather roared through several states, causing at least one death and spawning possible tornadoes.
In West Virginia, about 140,000 customers were without electricity Tuesday afternoon, or about 14% of all customers tracked in the state by poweroutage.us.
Meanwhile, a spring snowstorm was expected to drop more than a foot of snow in Wisconsin.
One of the hardest-hit areas was northeastern Oklahoma, where a strong weather system containing heavy rains produced three suspected tornadoes. The storms were also blamed for the death of a 46-year-old homeless woman in Tulsa who died inside a drainage pipe, police said.
Tulsa Fire Department spokesperson Andy Little said the woman’s boyfriend told authorities the two had gone to sleep at the entrance of the drainage pipe and were awakened by the floodwaters. Up to 1.5 inches (3.81 centimeters) of rain fell in Tulsa in about one hour, National Weather Service meteorologist Robert Darby said.
“It wasn’t a whole lot. But when it came down it was pretty rapid,” Darby said.
In Ohio, firefighters rescued two people who were trapped under a bridge Tuesday when a river began rising. The two people were sleeping under the bridge around 8:45 a.m. when the Scioto River started to rise, the Columbus Fire Department reported. While the pair were never directly in the water, the flooding prevented them from returning to the shore, so a fire department boat was sent to rescue them. No injuries were reported.
In southern Ohio, Mindy Broughton, 49, rushed into her mobile home Tuesday morning as the hail began pouring down and the winds picked up at the RV Park where she has lived near Hanging Rock for two years.
Broughton and her finance hunkered down as the mobile home quickly began rocking. Broughton said her finance used his body to shield her as the winds raged outside.
“I said I think we may die today,” she said.
In a matter of seconds, the winds died down. When Broughton opened her mobile home door, she saw the RV Park littered with debris and overturned RVs. Luckily, Broughton said there was no one inside the overturned mobile homes that could be seen in her Facebook Live video.
One neighbor told Broughton that he had seen a funnel cloud. Broughton headed to a nearby American Legion building to wait out the other expected storms.
Severe storms also swept through far southwestern Indiana on Tuesday morning, toppling trees and causing power outages, leading several local school districts to cancel the day’s classes. More than 18,000 homes and businesses were without power shortly before noon Tuesday, including in Vanderburgh County, home to Evansville, Indiana’s third-largest city.
Residents in Wisconsin were bracing for a spring snowstorm that forecasters warned could dump more than a foot of snow in eastern parts of the state, including the Green Bay area. The state’s top election official, Meagan Wolfe, urged residents planning to vote in Tuesday’s presidential primaries to consider voting earlier in the day, depending on their local forecast, to avoid travel woes.
The National Weather Service said snowfall totals could range from 4 to 8 inches over central Wisconsin and 8 to 14 inches over eastern Wisconsin, while wind gusts of 30 mph to 50 mph will create very limited visibility and make travel difficult at best.
The storm will bring “a very heavy, wet snow” to central and eastern Wisconsin, but it is nothing unusual for early April in the state, meteorologist Scott Cultice with the weather service’s Green Bay office said.
“Just three weeks ago we were in the 70s, so that kind of got people thinking spring is right around the corner — and here we’re in April and we’re getting a major snowstorm,” Cultice said. “As people say, `That’s springtime in Wisconsin.′ ”
In West Virginia, a storm blew off part of a vacant building’s roof in downtown Charleston, littering the street with bricks and closing the roadway to traffic Tuesday afternoon. Trees were dislodged from the earth by the roots and lay in roads, lawns and in some cases, on top of cars.
Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency for Fayette, Kanawha, Lincoln, and Nicholas counties because of storms, which he said caused flooding, downed trees, power outages and road blockages. With storms continuing Tuesday evening, Justice urged people to “exercise extreme caution.”
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear declared a state of emergency after severe storms swept through the state Tuesday morning while severe weather continued Tuesday evening with multiple tornado warnings issued in Kentucky and Tennessee.
“We have reports of substantial damage to a number of structures – and thankfully, as of right now we are not aware of any fatalities,” Beshear said in a statement. “We need all Kentuckians to stay weather aware.”
All Kentucky executive branch state office buildings closed Tuesday afternoon because of the expected storms. Some universities around the state canceled in-person classes.
Four homes in Prospect, Kentucky, were damaged by the storms, according to Mayor Doug Farnsley. The storm knocked down trees and knocked out power, but no injuries were reported, he said. A few homes in nearby Crestwood also reported damage from the storm, but no injuries, Oldham County Emergency Management said.
Forecasters issued tornado watches for parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia into Tuesday night. Multiple tornado warnings were issued Tuesday afternoon and evening in parts of Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana.
The National Weather Service confirmed a tornado in northeast Tennessee on Tuesday. A funeral home and a house were damaged in the town of Sunbright, a town of about 500 people, Matthew Brown, Morgan County’s 911 director, told The Associated Press. Power lines and trees were down, and some roads were closed, he said.
Radar showed the tornado touched down about 5:20 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time in Sunbright, Derek Eisentrout, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Morristown, Tennessee, said. Parts of downtown were damaged, including a funeral home, but there were no reports of injuries, he said.
A tornado watch remains in effect until 2 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time for parts of middle and east Tennessee.
The utility company in Memphis, Tennessee, reported that about 40,000 homes and businesses lost power temporarily Tuesday morning after an electric substation was struck by lightning, which then affected two other substations.
The storm was expected to move into New England Wednesday night into Thursday, with forecasts of 12 to 18 inches of snow in parts of New Hampshire and Maine and lesser amounts in other areas, the National Weather Service said. Wind gusts could reach 50 mph (80 kph) in some places, bringing the possibility of power outages.
Associated Press writers Ken Miller in Oklahoma City, Rick Callahan in Indianapolis, Leah Willingham in Charleston, West Virginia, John Raby in Cross Lanes, West Virginia, Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, Beatrice Dupuy in New York, Rebecca Reynolds in Louisville, Kentucky, and Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington, contributed to this report.