Residents in southern US states hit by severe weather in the past 24 hours are bracing for more storms.
Parts of Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee will be at greatest risk of severe weather on Wednesday. Large cities including Atlanta, Birmingham, Alabama and Knoxville, Tennessee are within the area under threat.
More than 50,000 homes and businesses were without power on Tuesday night from eastern Texas to South Carolina.
Tuesday’s storms killed at least two people — one in Texas and another in Georgia — and left thousands of people without power across the South.
In south-east Georgia, a woman was found dead on Tuesday night amid the wreckage of her mobile home in the unincorporated community of Ellabell, said Bryan County Coroner Bill Cox.
“It was just completely ripped to pieces,” Mr Cox said on Wednesday. “It’s like it exploded.”
Mr Cox said the dead woman’s husband was taken to hospital with injuries.
In the county seat of Pembroke, Georgia, near Savannah, large sections of roof were torn off a court building and the entrance to a government building across was demolished. Several people were injured as their homes were damaged, said Matthew Kent, a Bryan County government spokesman.
In east Texas, WM Soloman died when storm winds toppled a tree on to his home in Whitehouse, about 160 kilometres south-east of Dallas, Whitehouse Mayor James Wansley said.
As the storms moved into South Carolina late on Tuesday, debate was delayed for nearly an hour in the South Carolina legislature after the state House chamber was evacuated for a tornado warning for Columbia.
In Alabama, the weather service said it was sending survey teams to examine potential tornado damage in the Wetumpka area. Lightning struck a flea market in the northern Alabama community of Lacey’s Spring, causing a fire that gutted the building, news outlets reported.
In Mississippi, fallen trees and limbs closed a stretch of motorway for hours in Newton County.
Several tornadoes are expected across a large part of the South on Wednesday, the national Storm Prediction Centre said.
“The atmosphere will be primed again for more severe storms as we go through Wednesday,” said Jared Guyer, a forecaster at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.
Agencies contributed to this report
