WASHINGTON (AFP) – More severe weather is on the way for the southern and central United States, forecasters said on Monday, just days after the worst single tornado in modern US history killed 116 people in Missouri.
A new tornado watch was issued Monday for Oklahoma and parts of southern Kansas due to an "evolving tornado threat," said Russell Schneider, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center.
The central United States was warned to brace for more big storms on Tuesday.
"We are currently forecasting a major severe weather outbreak for Tuesday over the central United States with strong tornadoes likely over Oklahoma, Kansas, extreme northern Texas, southwest Missouri," Schneider said.
The warning was extended to the area around Joplin, Missouri, which was hit hard in the weekend tornado, and would also include cities like Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Wichita, Topeka and Kansas City.
"On Wednesday, the system will shift eastward to the Mississippi River valley," Schneider said, including central Illinois and Indiana, southeast Missouri and the southeastern states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and much of Arkansas.
The United States is on pace for a record year for deadly tornadoes, according to officials.
There have already been about 1,000 tornadoes this year, the National Weather Service said. The previous yearly record was set in 2004 with 1,817.
Prior to the twister that tore through Joplin on Sunday, there were 365 people confirmed killed by tornadoes in the United States in 2012, most of them in a spate of twisters that struck the south in April.
In June 1953, 116 people were killed by a tornado that struck Flint, Michigan, an event that has tied with the Joplin storm as the deadliest single twister since modern records began in 1950.
