ATLANTA (Reuters) – Thunderstorms accompanied by heavy rains and strong winds in Atlanta caused three deaths from falling trees and left more than 100,000 without electric power, officials said on Friday.
Two women were killed when a tree fell on their car, and a 19-year-old died while clearing debris when the storm hit late on Thursday.
As communities across the middle of the country cleaned up from storms earlier in the week, a wave of nasty weather started hitting the South and East Thursday and Friday.
Some 200 people were evacuated from their homes in central and northern Vermont after severe thunderstorms and drenching rains overnight caused flooding.
Storms from a front stalled over northern New England delivered more than 5 inches of rain and hailstones the size of baseballs around the Vermont towns of Duxbury and Barre, meteorologists with the National Weather Service said.
Some residents of the capital city of Montpelier were evacuated after the Winooski River and its tributaries spilled their banks and flooded multiple roads, they said.
A circus tent collapsed during a storm in western Pennsylvania, injuring at least three people, a circus employee said on Friday.
Dozens of people were gathered under the red-and-yellow big top in Westmoreland County on Thursday when it was blown down by sudden high winds, according to Marie Lawson, secretary for the Lewis and Clark Circus, based in Easley, South Carolina.
Softball-sized hail hit Georgia and high winds downed trees in upstate New York.
Another round of thunderstorms is expected starting Friday afternoon just as travelers hit the roads for the Memorial holiday weekend.
Storms are forecast from the central Appalachians into New England, and major cities along the major I-95 artery from Washington to New York City could experience severe weather, AccuWeather.com said.
The storms expected for the Northeast could produce frequent lightning and flooding downpours.
In Joplin, Missouri, the list of people still missing five days after a monster tornado tore through the city was narrowed to 156 on Friday after authorities were able to confirm some people on the list had survived.
Authorities on Thursday had released a list of 232 names of people still unaccounted for. Since then, 90 of those people were confirmed alive and removed from the list. Two names were removed as duplicates, and six were confirmed dead and removed.
On Thursday, the known toll of dead from Sunday's massive tornado in Joplin, Missouri, went up by one to 126.
Search crews with cadaver dogs were still looking for victims in the miles of rubble left by the storm, but hope was fading for finding people alive.
A series of twisters had killed another 16 people in three states on Tuesday and early Wednesday.
Tornadoes have killed a total of 506 people in the United States so far this year, making it the deadliest tornado year since 1953, according to the National Weather Service.