What to Know About the Destructive Spring Storm System

Heavy rain and fierce winds have been pummeling the central and southeastern United States for more than five days, leaving a trail of death, damage and disruption across parts of 19 states.

The storm system, born of warm air, strong winds, abundant moisture and an unstable atmosphere, drenched the middle of the country through the weekend, devastating communities from Texas to Ohio with flooding and tornadoes.

The storm is now shifting eastward toward the Atlantic coast, and it is expected to start moving out to sea on Monday and Tuesday, leaving behind enough fallen rain to keep rivers and streams swelling for days to come.

Here’s what to know about the destructive storm system.

Many states have been drenched by heavy rain for days.

The heavy rain from the storm lasted for days in many areas, saturating the ground and engorging streams and rivers with much more runoff than they could handle.

The area around Benton, in western Kentucky, recorded more than 15 inches of rain from Tuesday morning to Sunday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service. Memphis got more than a foot over that same period, and some areas along Interstate 40 to the northeast of the city were swamped with nearly 16 inches. Totals of eight to 11 inches were common from Central Arkansas through the boot heel of Missouri to the Ohio River Valley.

As the storm moves east and southeast on Monday and Tuesday, it is expected to drop its heaviest remaining rain — as much as two inches is possible in some areas — in southeastern Alabama and central Georgia. It is also set to soak most of the East Coast, though not as much.

The rain brought dangerous flooding.

Most of the storm’s damage so far has been caused by floodwaters that overtopped riverbanks and levees, surged through streets and inundated the basements and ground floors of buildings. Many of the hardest-hit places were riverside cities and towns that have seen catastrophic flooding before.

Rivers continued to rise even after the worst of the storm had moved on. “Given the fact that everything is so saturated, everything is just running right off the ground and into area creeks and streams,” Nate McGinnis, a Weather Service meteorologist in Wilmington, Ohio, said on Saturday.

Dozens of rivers from Arkansas to Indiana were flooding on Sunday, threatening bridges, levees, water and sewage systems, and other infrastructure. Some streams and rivers were not expected to crest for several more days. Stranded residents were rescued across the region.

The still-rising Kentucky River swamped the streets of Frankfort, Ky., the state capital, on Sunday, and residents were waiting anxiously for the nearby river to crest. The city’s flood wall can withstand 51 feet, but the Weather Service predicted that the river would crest at 49.5 feet.

Elsewhere in Kentucky, parts of Shelbyville and all of Falmouth were under mandatory evacuation orders. Some neighborhoods of Nashville were awash. Floodwaters in Mammoth Springs, Ark., washed out a railroad line on Saturday and derailed a freight train.

The storm has killed over a dozen people across five states.

At least 18 deaths had been attributed to the storm system as of Sunday evening. Nine of them were in Tennessee.

Two of the dead were young boys — a 5-year-old found in a house in Little Rock, Ark., and a 9-year-old swept away by floodwaters in Frankfort as he walked to a school bus stop.

A fire chief in Whitewater, Mo., was killed as he responded to tornado damage, and a 16-year-old firefighter on his way to help with a rescue effort was killed in a crash in Beaufort, Mo.

Scores of tornadoes tore through the region.

The storm system has packed a violent punch, especially on Wednesday, when it spawned dozens of tornadoes from southern Arkansas to northern Indiana.

There were so many reports of tornadoes that some Weather Service offices delayed confirming them. And in Nashville on Thursday, so many tornado warnings and alerts were issued that some of the city’s warning sirens exhausted their batteries.

In Goreville, Ill., a tornado just barely missed Kassandra Beasley’s house on Wednesday night. One had passed just 100 feet from her house, she said, but it wasn’t until the next day that realized just how close she had come to having a brush with disaster.

“I got home that night,” she recalled, “and you could see it took out both houses next to us — everything — it was that close.”

Tornadoes also touched down over the weekend elsewhere. One hit near Barton, Ala., late Saturday, and another, in Jasper County, Miss., killed one person.

The storm system has featured strong gusty winds, even in areas where no tornadoes formed. It knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of customers, though service was restored in most areas by the weekend.

The pace of tornado formation eased after Wednesday, but more tornadoes are possible in the coming days as the storm moves east, especially in parts of southeastern Georgia, northern Florida and southern South Carolina.

Reporting was contributed by Nazaneen Ghaffar, Ali Watkins, Carly Gist, Isabelle Taft and Kevin Williams.