Dangerous storms slam 10 states, unleashing multiple tornadoes and damaging winds

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By Mary Gilbert, Hanna Park, Emma Tucker, Taylor Romine

(CNN) — Multiple tornadoes and intense storms hit the eastern half of the United States on Tuesday as a relentless severe weather pattern that left 28 people dead in recent days began to wind down.

Damaging storms tore through parts of 10 states – including areas already battered by this spring’s storms like Kentucky and Tennessee – on Tuesday, unleashing multiple tornadoes, damaging wind gusts and hail bigger than baseballs.

There have been more than 2,000 reports to the Storm Prediction Center of damaging wind gusts, hail and tornadoes since last Wednesday and more than two dozen states have reported some sort of storm damage in that span. The stretch of violent weather killed 19 people in Kentucky, seven in Missouri, and two in Virginia.

It also prompted four tornado emergencies– the most serious tornado warning issued by the National Weather Service – in Illinois, Alabama and Kansas since Friday. At least two EF4-strength tornadoes and multiple EF3s have been confirmed so far.

The weather pattern behind these seven consecutive days of dangerous thunderstorms is easing up significantly Wednesday, though a few pockets of severe storms are still possible.

Destructive storms hit multiple states Tuesday

Tornado watches stretched across parts of 11 states Tuesday afternoon as storms roared to life.

A possible tornado damaged a Kirkland’s warehouse close to Jackson Regional Airport in Madison County, Tennessee, causing substantial damage to the roof, according to the county’s emergency management agency.

A “large and destructive tornado” was confirmed in Madison County, Alabama, near Huntsville in the evening, the National Weather Service said, prompting a rare tornado emergency for part of the county.

Huntsville also received reports of “golf ball size hail and related damage along with a lot of power outages,” said city spokesperson Kelly Schrimsher. Authorities so far have not reported any injuries.

In a video obtained by CNN, a resident in the city of Madison, Alabama, west of Huntsville, captured a massive funnel cloud moving in the background of a road.

Another video from Madison shows a suburban neighborhood with a path of destruction “at least 1 mile long,” according to the resident who posted it. At least one home is missing a roof, with debris and trees scattered on the road, the video showed.

Parts of northern Alabama and Georgia were battered by damaging wind gusts and heavy rain throughout the day and overnight Tuesday, with emergency authorities in both states reporting power outages and downed trees.

Power was out for tens of thousands of homes and business across Alabama, Georgia, Missouri and Kentucky early Wednesday morning, according to energy tracker PowerOutage.us.

A few small pockets of severe weather are possible on Wednesday, but the threat is nowhere near as expansive as what’s played out over the past week.

Seven straight days of damaging storms

Ferocious storms have carved through hundreds of miles of the US in recent days, and there have been more than 150 tornado reports since Wednesday.

National Weather Service storm survey teams are still picking through extensive damage to determine exactly how many tornadoes tore through the central and eastern US since last week, but they’ve confirmed multiple EF3s and two EF4s.

An EF4 tornado tore through Williamson County in southern Illinois on Friday with 190 mph winds, injuring at least seven people as it damaged homes and obliterated trees.

An EF3 tornado rocked the St. Louis area Friday, according to the NWS, reaching its peak intensity with 152 mph winds as it stretched a mile wide over the north side of the city. The tornado killed at least five people and injured dozens, while also “damaging or destroying thousands of buildings.”

Storms also left vast destruction behind in Laurel County, Kentucky, with 17 deaths reported there over the weekend. The city of London, about 75 miles south of Lexington, was hit particularly hard by an EF4 tornado with 170 mph winds. Police responding to mutual aid calls for tornado victims described the devastation as overwhelming.

The twister’s track through Pulaski and Laurel was about 55 miles long and its maximum width was about a mile long, the county said. It was the deadliest tornado in the county’s history – the last tornado, and death from a twister, confirmed in the county was in 2012.

Evacuations were briefly scheduled in London and other devastated parts of Laurel County Tuesday evening over fears that new storms could turn lingering debris into dangerous projectiles.

Sunday night saw tornadoes tear through Kansas, with authorities reporting significant damage to homes in the city of Plevna, roughly 60 miles from Wichita, and the small northwestern town of Grinnell.

Plevna was under a rare tornado emergency, the most extreme tornado warning, issued by the National Weather Service.

Grinnell endured a “large and extremely dangerous tornado” Sunday evening, according to the NWS. Crews later determined it was an EF3 with 140 mph winds.

About 20 homes were destroyed in Grinnell, which is home to fewer than 300 people, according to Gove County Sheriff Shawn Mesch.

“Essentially the entire west of Grinnell was destroyed,” Mesch told CNN Monday. But despite the level of destruction, there have been no reports of injuries: “It’s insane that nobody was hurt,” he said.

The threats didn’t let up Monday, with dangerous storms stretching more than 500 miles from northern Texas to Nebraska in the afternoon hours. Multiple dangerous tornadoes unfolded in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Nebraska.

At least five counties in Oklahoma were damaged by storms, according to the state’s emergency management. Pittsburg County, in eastern Oklahoma, was hit hard by a tornado in the evening.

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CNN’s Karina Tsui, Matt Rehbein, Taylor Ward, Diego Mendoza Diaz, Ray Sanchez, Andy Rose, Joe Sutton and Zoe Sottile contributed to this report.