Winter Storm Leaves Several Dead in Louisiana, Texas

The deaths, in Louisiana and Texas, included an elderly couple in northwest Louisiana who were killed when a tornado tossed their trailer home hundreds of feet and damaged more than 50 homes.

The deadly tornado was just one of a series of dangerous weather events tangled up in the storm system. Powerful winds pummeled Georgia and Tennessee, officials warned of floods in Mississippi, and Alabama braced for tornadoes. Warnings of hail and snow followed closely behind, extending from Oklahoma up through the Midwest.

“This is one of the stronger systems that we’ve seen in recent years,” said Kurt Van Speybroeck, an emergency response specialist at the Southern Region Headquarters of the National Weather Service. He said on Saturday afternoon that the strongest part of the storm was passing over Alabama and Tennessee and that it was moving east about 40 mph. It would likely roll over the Carolinas on Sunday, and be off the coast by Sunday afternoon at the latest, he said.

The Louisiana tornado, in Bossier Parish, was strong enough to flatten entire trailer homes, said Charlie Woodrum, of the National Weather Service. The twister’s winds likely spun at up to 135 mph, he said.

The elderly couple’s home, a double-wide trailer, was found about 200 feet away from its normal location, said Lt. Bill Davis, a spokesman for the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office. Three dogs who had lived with the couple were missing.

“This thing happened at two in the morning,” Davis said. “It was just bad timing.”

Another man died in Oil City, about 20 miles west, about 1 a.m. when a large tree fell on his home, collapsing the roof, the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

A fourth person was killed by the storm in Nacogdoches County, Texas, a local police dispatcher said. According to local news reports, the 44-year-old man was killed when a tree fell on his home early Saturday.

About 190,000 customers were without power across the south, according to PowerOutage.us, a website that tracks power failures.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .