A destructive storm marched across the United States, spawning tornadoes that touched down in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, where two deaths were reported, and it delivered blizzard-like conditions to the Great Plains and threatened more severe weather Wednesday in the South.
In northern Louisiana, a young boy was found dead in a wooded area more than a half-mile from his home in the Keithville area, just south of Shreveport, Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator said. The child's mother was later found dead one street over from her home, he said.
The child's father reported them missing from their home, which the sheriff said was demolished in the storm.
“We couldn’t even find the house that he was describing with the address. Everything was gone," Prator told Shreveport TV station KSLA.
In Farmerville, Louisiana, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) to the east of Keithville, about 20 people were taken to a hospital, some with critical injuries, after a tornado caused major damage to mobile homes and an apartment complex, the Union Parish Sheriff's Office told Monroe TV station KNOE.
Wednesday's forecast calls for more severe storms and potentially additional tornadoes along the central Gulf Coast, including New Orleans and southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle,
Earlier Tuesday, five tornadoes were confirmed across north Texas based on video and eyewitness reports, but potentially a dozen may have occurred, the National Weather Service in Fort Worth, Texas, reported.
Dozens of homes and businesses were damaged by the line of thunderstorms, and several people were injured in the suburbs and counties stretching north of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. More than 1,000 flights into and out of area airports were delayed, and over 100 were canceled Tuesday, according to the tracking service FlightAware.
Blizzard warnings stretched from Montana into western Nebraska and Colorado, and the National Weather Service said as much as 2 feet (61 centimeters) of snow was possible in some areas of western South Dakota and northwestern Nebraska. Winds of more than 50 mph (80 kph) at times will make it impossible to see outdoors in Nebraska, officials said.
“There’s essentially no one traveling right now,” said Justin McCallum, a manager at the Flying J truck stop at Ogallala, Nebraska.
