1 of 20. People sift through the rubble of what is left of homes after a tornado hit the town of Vilonia April 28, 2014. 
 
 VILONIA, Arkansas (Reuters) - A ferocious storm system caused a twister in Mississippi and threatened tens of millions of people across the U.S. Southeast on Monday, a day after it spawned tornadoes that killed 16 people and tossed cars like toys in Arkansas and other states. 
 
 A tornado went through Tupelo, Mississippi in the northern part of the state at about 3 p.m. (1800 GMT), damaging hundreds of homes, downing power lines and toppling trees, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant told CNN. 
 
 There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries after six instances of tornadoes touching down in the state. 
 
 "It is not over. This is going to be a prolonged storm," Bryant said. 
 
 Parts of Alabama, western Georgia and Tennessee also were at risk as the storm system that produced the series of tornadoes headed east toward the Mid-Atlantic states. 
 
 Rescue workers, volunteers and victims have been sifting through the rubble in the hardest-hit state of Arkansas, looking for survivors in central Faulkner County where a tornado reduced homes to splinters, snapped power lines and mangled trees. 
 
 Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe said at least 14 people died statewide in the storm that authorities said produced the first fatalities of this year's U.S. tornado season. He previously told a news conference 16 had been killed but later said there was a mistake in calculation. 
 
 Nine of the victims came from the same street in the town of Vilonia, with a population of about 4,100, where a new intermediate school set to open in August was heavily damaged by a tractor trailer blown into its roof. A steel farm shop anchored to concrete was erased from the landscape. 
 
 Beebe told reporters of the capricious nature of tornadoes. He said a woman died when the door of her home's reinforced safe room collapsed, while a father and three daughters survived by seeking shelter in a bathtub that was flipped over in winds that leveled the house. 
 
 One person was killed in neighboring Oklahoma and another in Iowa, state authorities said. 
 
 'LONG ROAD TO HEALING' 
 
 "Everything is just leveled to the ground," Vilonia resident Matt Rothacher said. "It cut a zig-zag right through town." 
 
 Rothacher was at home with his wife and four children when the tornado passed through. While his home survived, The Valley Church where he serves as pastor was flattened. 
 
 Two elementary school-aged boys died in their home after having a pizza dinner at a friend's home, said Rothacher, who was helping provide grief counseling to the family that had sent the two boys home after they finished their meal as the storm approached. 
 
 The home that the boys left survived the tornado. The home the boys returned to did not, Rothacher said. 
 
 "These homes, these lives, won't be put back together anytime soon. It will be a long road to healing for these families." 
 
 The White House said President Barack Obama, who has been on a trip abroad, called Beebe to receive an update on the damage and to offer his condolences. 
 
 Medical officials reported at least 100 people in Arkansas were injured. 
 
 "It's so heartbreaking. I've never seen destruction like this before," U.S. Representative Tim Griffin told reporters after touring Vilonia, which was previously hit by a tornado about three years ago. "I saw a Dr. Seuss book in the rubble. I saw a Spider-Man shirt in the rubble. It just breaks your heart." 
 
 The roar of heavy equipment filled the air in Vilonia and nearby Mayflower as crews worked to clear debris off the streets or to load rubble onto trucks for removal. 
 
 TORNADO WARNING PERSISTS 
 
 The National Weather Service said the threat of tornadoes will last for several days as a strong weather system interacts with a large area of instability across the central and southern United States. 
 
 "This is a multi-day event and today is the second day of significant tornado risk and unfortunately, probably not the last," said Bill Bunting, operations chief at the National Weather Service's Storm Predictions Center in Norman, Oklahoma. 
 
 North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency for four counties where tornadoes hit on Friday and warned that more rough weather was on the way. 
 
 More than 10,000 people were without power in Arkansas on Monday morning, officials said. 
 
 The Arkansas National Guard was deployed to sift through the wreckage. Beebe declared a state of disaster for Faulkner and two other counties. 
 
 A tornado in Baxter Springs, Kansas that touched down on Sunday evening destroyed as many as 70 homes and 25 businesses and injured 34 people, of whom nine were hospitalized, state and county officials said. One person was killed in Kansas, likely due to the same storm system, officials said. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Steve Barnes and Suzi Parker in Little Rock, Carey Gillam and Kevin Murphy in Kansas City, Missouri, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Wi,. Lisa Bose McDermott in Texarkana, Ark., and Curtis Skinner in New York; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Scott Malone, Bernadette Baum, Chris Reese and Cynthia Osterman) ||||| GARLAND, Texas (AP) — Residents surveyed the destruction from deadly tornadoes in North Texas as the same storm system brought winter woes to the Midwest on Monday, amplifying flooding that's blamed for more than a dozen deaths and prompting hundreds of flight cancellations. 
 
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 At least 11 people died and dozens were injured in the tornadoes that swept through the Dallas area on Saturday and caused substantial damage. That, plus flooding in Missouri and Illinois, were the latest in a succession of severe weather events across the country in the last week that led to at least 45 deaths. 
 
 A range of precipitation was forecast Monday for the country's midsection, including heavy snow, ice and blustery winds in parts of 11 states and heavy rain in already-waterlogged parts of Missouri and Arkansas. 
 
 The system caused more than 1,400 flights to be canceled — nearly half of which were at Chicago's two main airports — and 2,600 to be delayed, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. A typical day sees about 150 cancelations and 4,000 delays. 
 
 Authorities in Georgia confirmed two more deaths Monday. Gordon County Chief Deputy Robert Paris said the body of a man whose car was swept away when water overtook his car was recovered. Paris said the second body was recovered at Self Lake, and authorities were investigating how that person died. 
 
 In North Texas, local officials estimated as many as 1,450 homes were damaged or destroyed by at least nine tornadoes. 
 
 "This is a huge impact on our community and we're all suffering," Garland Police Lt. Pedro Barineau said of the suburb about 20 miles northeast of Dallas, where eight people died, 15 were injured and about 600 structures, mostly single-family homes, were damaged. 
 
 In nearby Rowlett, City Manager Brian Funderburk said Sunday that 23 people were injured, but that there were no deaths and no reports of missing people. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said Sunday night that as many as 600 homes were damaged in Rowlett. 
 
 Three people died in Collin County, about 45 miles northeast of Dallas, according to sheriff's deputy Chris Havey, although the circumstances were not immediately clear. 
 
 Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made disaster declarations Sunday for four counties — Dallas, Collin, Rockwall and Ellis — and warned that the number of victims could rise. 
 
 The American Red Cross was fanning out in the Dallas area to distribute supplies including tarps, shovels, rakes and trash bags. Chris and Sheila Carter were staying at a Red Cross shelter in Garland with their 22-year-old son. They live in an apartment complex there, where they rode out the storm. Their ceiling caved in and they had some windows broken out, with water leaking in after. 
 
 "It sounded like a train was on the roof for five or six minutes," Chris Carter said. 
 
 Many roads across West Texas and the Panhandle were still closed, with long delays expected. 
 
 Interstate 40, the main east-west highway across the Panhandle, reopened Monday morning. Traffic had been at a standstill for hours in West Texas where Interstate 10 splits into Interstate 20, before it began slowly moving Monday. Officials said traffic became snarled Sunday night and was backed up for about 13 miles. 
 
 Vito Randazzo of California sat on I-10 for about 13 hours. "Everybody's just sleeping in their cars," said Randazzo, who added that the roadway was snow-packed and icy. "I can't believe the road was left in this condition." Around 9 a.m. Monday he was able to see to drive across a median and get onto a service road. 
 
 Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency after blizzard conditions affected the western and central parts of the state and up to a foot of rain fell in the southern and eastern sections. State emergency officials say more than 50 people have been injured and about 175,000 are without power. 
 
 To the northeast, several inches of rain caused flooding in Illinois and Missouri, where Gov. Jay Nixon also declared a state of emergency. More than 180 roads in Missouri were closed Monday due to flooding. 
 
 Over the weekend, six people died when two separate vehicles drove into flooded roadways in south-central Missouri, Pulaski County Sheriff Ronald Long said; four of them were international soldiers temporarily stationed at an Army base. Greene County authorities said two fatalities there were associated with the flooding. 
 
 Residents in and around the small St. Louis-area town of West Alton were evacuating as the Mississippi River nears a potential record crest. An unusual amount of late-fall rain had the river already high before torrential downpours that began Saturday. Some parts of eastern Missouri have received 6 inches of rain or more over the past three days. 
 
 In southern Illinois, authorities said three adults and two children drowned Saturday when the vehicle they were riding in was swept away and sank in a rain-swollen creek. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press reporters Scott Mayerowitz in New York; Jamie Stengle in Dallas; Michael Graczyk in Houston; Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas; Maria Sudekum in Kansas City, Missouri; and Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed to this report. 
 
 ___ 
 
 This story has been corrected to show that a third of the canceled flights are in Chicago, not at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
– A rare outbreak of winter tornadoes has killed at least seven people in Missouri and Arkansas and left a trail of destruction across the South and Midwest. Three people were killed by a tornado in a small town in northern Arkansas and a tornado spawned by the same weather system killed four more in Missouri. Tornado watches are in effect for parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana as the system moves east. Making matters worse, the storm system has caused flash flooding in parts of Alabama, MSNBC reports One Arkansas man survived with only bumps and bruises after a tornado plucked him from his home. "It sucked me out of my house and carried me across the road and dropped me," he told AP. "I was Superman for a while. You're just free-floating through the air. Trees are knocking you and smacking you down." Meteorologists believe the violent winter weather is linked to changes in Pacific Ocean temperatures, which have affected the jet stream across the central US.