Tornadoes and storms leave 18 dead and 600,000 without power

More than 600,000 homes in 13 states from Texas to Pennsylvania were without power early Monday morning after severe storms and tornadoes claimed at least 18 lives over the weekend.

There were more than 200,000 outages in Kentucky as of 2 a.m., according to tracking website poweroutage.us, and about 300,000 more were without power in Arkansas, Missouri, Virginia and West Virginia. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said early Monday he had declared a state of emergency.

While thunderstorms continued throughout the night, more than 12 million people in the Southeast and Midwest were at one point under tornado warnings, indicating that tornadoes are possible, according to the National Weather Service. Most of those warnings were set to expire at 6 a.m. Eastern time Monday.

A weather service forecast calls for more heavy rain and thunderstorms as the storm system moves from the Ohio Valley into the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast later on Memorial Day.

The system is the latest to hit the region in recent days. Last week, five people were killed and part of a town was destroyed in Iowa when a powerful tornado struck.

On Sunday, severe thunderstorms in Howell County, Missouri, brought baseball-sized hail and tornadoes that downed trees and damaged homes near the city of Mountain View, said Kelsey Angle, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Springfield.

Meteorologists said storms forming over Missouri would intensify as they moved eastward throughout the night, bringing strong winds to Kentucky and Tennessee.

“Kentucky and Tennessee will actually be in the crosshairs of the damaging winds,” said Bill Bunting, a meteorologist at the Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. He said tornadoes and hail up to three inches or more in diameter are possible.

Kentucky Governor Beshear said power lines were down across the state and there were reports of tornadoes and storm damage. As of Sunday afternoon, there was one confirmed death statewide but no other injuries.

“We’ve survived at least the first part of this event,” Mr. Beshear said from a command center. “And we want to make sure we don’t lose anyone else.”