A deadly multi-day storm system that has unleashed tornadoes and heavy rainfall will continue to batter the Midwest and Mid-South on Friday, in what forecasters describe as a “catastrophic and potentially historic flash flood event.”
The storm system has already wreaked havoc across multiple states, spawning devastating tornadoes in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri that left homes in piles of debris, downpours triggered severe flooding in multiple states, and the deaths of at least seven people and over a dozen more are injured.
According to PowerOutage.Us, over 116,000 people across the country were without power on Friday morning, and communities in multiple states are waking up to severe storm damage.
The National Weather Service warned that the system’s stalling front boundary will lead to life-threatening flash flooding and significant storms from the Ohio Valley to the Mid-South and Arkansas-Louisiana-Texas area through the weekend.
Deep moisture from the system will create “persistent rounds of intense thunderstorms” leading to “significant to extreme, potentially historic, rainfall totals over increasingly saturated soils,” the weather service said in a morning advisory.
High risks of excessive rainfall could continue through Sunday morning in what the weather service has called “an increasingly dangerous and life-threatening situation.”
