Death toll at 25 in latest bout of storms

Storm systems are seen over the eastern US in an infrared satellite image taken April 27, 2011.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala (Reuters) - The death toll this week from tornadoes and severe storms pummeling the South rose to 25 people and the nasty weather is not yet over, emergency officials and weather forecasters said on Wednesday.

Governors in Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee each declared a state of emergency, and in Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour declared a state of emergency for 39 counties.

The latest casualties were in Louisiana and Tennessee.

A woman in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was killed at about 3:30 p.m. when a tree fell on her mobile home, said police Sergeant Jerri Weary.

Two people in Monroe, Louisiana, were believed to have drowned during heavy flooding early Wednesday, said police spokeswoman Tarra Smith.

These were in addition to five deaths in Mississippi, six confirmed in Alabama and 11 fatalities in Arkansas during the latest round of spring storms.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency revised the state's storm-related death count to five since Tuesday after one county amended its number. The state previously reported six deaths.

Severe weather in Mississippi damaged homes, downed trees and power lines and sparked flash flooding.

One Mississippi death was a worker killed Wednesday in Yazoo County while removing a tree from a roadway, said spokesman Jeff Rent.

National park service officials said a Covington, Louisiana, police officer died when a tree snapped and fell on his tent at a Choctaw County, Mississippi, campground. The man was shielding his daughter, who was not hurt.

Alabama officials confirmed six fatalities as a result of the deadly weather that ripped through most of the state overnight.

POWER LINES SNAPPED

Winds of 100 miles per hour pounded central Alabama early Wednesday, snapping trees across power lines, roads and buildings, said Mark Kelly, spokesman for the Jefferson County Emergency Management Office.

Approximately 245,000 customers were without power in the lower two-thirds of the state, said Alabama Power spokesman Michael Sznajderman.

The central counties of Shelby and Jefferson, which includes the state's most populous city of Birmingham, had almost 150,000 households and businesses with outages.

In one suburban Birmingham neighborhood, a family was briefly trapped inside their home by fallen trees.

"As I was grabbing my daughter and running to the closet, trees hit the house," said Lisa Hey, who estimated 90 percent of the trees in her neighborhood were uprooted.

Several parts of north Texas, including areas which have been charred by the state's massive wildfires, also were pounded by tornadoes and severe thunderstorms Tuesday night.

"Numerous homes have been damaged or destroyed," said Lieutenant Chuck Allen, emergency management coordinator in Van Zandt County, located about halfway between Dallas and Tyler.

Residents in Tennessee are coping with flooding, power outages and blocked roads. Twenty-six county school systems were closed on Wednesday, and the airport in Murfreesboro sustained damage.

"We've got pockets of trees down and localized flooding from west to east Tennessee," said Emergency Management Agency spokesman Dean Flener.

AccuWeather.com meteorologists said the Tennessee Valley will bear the brunt of tornadoes expected Wednesday.

The worst of the storms are expected into the evening. The corridor from northern Mississippi and northern Alabama to southeastern Kentucky is likely to be the hardest hit, AccuWeather.com reported.

A powerful storm system in that region could spawn large and long-tracking tornadoes, meteorologists said.

"If strong tornadoes like this hit any populated area, they could result in complete destruction," AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Heather Buchman said on the Web site.

FLOOD CONCERN

Floods remain a big concern in several states, where days of rain and the melted snow from the winter's heavy falls have caused rising rivers and saturated soils.

A rural Missouri county was evacuating residents on Wednesday from a 130,000-acre area that will be flooded if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decides to intentionally breach a Mississippi River levee in an effort to keep the historic river town of Cairo, Illinois, from flooding.

Flooding became more widespread in Arkansas on Wednesday after several days of intense storms. The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department reported numerous road closures, including the partial collapse of a highway near Harrison.

Emergency officials in Tennessee are bracing for floods expected along the Mississippi River early next week.

The storms and flooding are the latest in the violent weather that has pummeled much of the mid-South this month. Two weeks ago at least 47 people died as storms tore a wide path from Oklahoma all the way to North Carolina. The National Weather Service said that bout of storms was the deadliest in three years.

(Additional reporting by Suzi Parker, Jim Forsyth, Leigh Coleman, Tim Ghianni, Laura Myers and Mary Wisniewski; Reporting and writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Greg McCune and Jerry Norton)