Bryan County Fire and Emergency Services said Tuesday night that multiple agencies were rushing to help. The county was placed under a tornado warning.

“Take cover! We have reports of several homes with people trapped in the city and county! says the department.

Mary Edwards was driving on Interstate 16 in Georgia not far from Savannah when she saw a tornado ahead of her.

The tornado appeared just minutes after Edwards received an alert on his phone for a tornado warning.

“To see him right in front of you is humbling. It’s exciting, it’s majestic, and you really get that sense of mortality. You surrender,” she said.

More than 35 million people were at some level of risk for severe storms on Tuesday, particularly from the Gulf Coast states toward the Carolinas, but also from northeast Oklahoma toward Missouri, the Storm Prediction Center said.

In East Texas, a middle-aged man was killed Tuesday morning in the community of Whitehouse, southeast of Tyler, when a tree fell on an RV where he was staying during a storm was descending, said the Smith County emergency management coordinator.

The victim’s name has not been released. The county was assessing damage to the area after reporting several fallen trees on homes and trees on roads, coordinator Jay Brooks said.

At least three people suffered non-life-threatening injuries in Allendale County, South Carolina, a spokesperson for the South Carolina Division of Emergency Management said. Brandon LaVorgna added that there were no known deaths related to the storm.

A few dozen homes and businesses in the county bordering Georgia were damaged, La Vorgna said.

The most severe risk of storms — a level 3 out of 5 — exists for more than 4.8 million people in parts of the Florida Panhandle, southern and eastern Alabama, central and southern Georgia and parts of South Carolina, the center said.

The center said there were 33 tornado reports from Mississippi to South Carolina as of 8:45 p.m. ET.

At least five possible tornadoes were reported in Mississippi, knocking down trees in Jefferson Davis and Covington counties northwest of Hattiesburg, as well as Newton and Scott counties east of Jackson, the The National Weather Service said.

Downed trees and power lines near the community of Coffeeville in southwest Alabama could also have been caused by a tornado, the weather service said.

Tornado Watches were in effect Tuesday evening for parts of Florida, central and southern Georgia, the weather service said.
More than 42,000 customers were without power in Georgia and South Carolina, according to PowerOutage.us.

Rain was also causing problems on Tuesday. Much of metro Atlanta is under a flash flood warning, according to the National Weather Service. As much as 3 inches of rain fell across the region and light to moderate rain is expected to continue through Tuesday afternoon. Several gauges listed on the National Weather Service’s Southeast River Forecast Center website showed minor flooding in the area.

Storms wreak havoc in Texas

Storms battered parts of Texas from Monday evening through Tuesday morning, with winds damaging some homes and businesses outside of Dallas-Fort Worth and, in one case, toppling an RV trailer, the affiliate reported. CNN WFAA.

Amber Zeleny’s husband had just been helping his daughter out of the trailer when she flipped over more than once in the backyard of their home in West Egan, a county community from Johnson about 20 miles south of Fort Worth, WFAA reported.

The trailer appeared to roll over him and he was sent to hospital with injuries, but he told a reporter he was fine, according to the WFAA.

“I’m standing outside the front door watching everything, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God,'” Zeleny told WFAA.

Amber Zeleny, 53, right, is comforted by her daughter Brittaney Deaton, 17, on Tuesday after a severe storm in Johnson County, Texas.

WFAA aerial video showed roof damage to buildings in rural Johnson County as well as Collin County, just northeast of Dallas.

Four people were rescued Monday night from rapid floodwaters in McKinney, Texas, about 30 miles north of Dallas, officials said. The McKinney Fire Department said on Twitter he performed three separate water rescues. No one was hurt.
The McKinney Fire Department performed multiple water rescues Monday night in flash flooding conditions.

Severe weather in the South

The severe weather is the latest in a series of storm systems that have battered the southern United States for three straight weeks.

The first system spawned a deadly EF-3 tornado just outside New Orleans and 25 tornadoes in Texas last month.

Many of the same areas that have seen extreme weather in recent weeks will be at risk again in the coming week, Bill Bunting of the Storm Prediction Center told CNN.

“Very humid air flowing north from the Gulf of Mexico, which has helped storms develop over the past few weeks, is once again what we will see this week,” Bunting said.

By Wednesday, a separate system will form, bringing another round of storms to the south and extending the severe threat for another day. The highest risk – a level 3 out of 5 – covers about 12 million people in Atlanta; Birmingham, Alabama; and Chattanooga, Tennessee, the prediction center said.

On Thursday, the threat lessens as storms push back the east coast. While the system mainly brings storms to the south, much of the east coast will see rain then.

CNN’s Dave Hennen, Gene Norman, Jennifer Gray, Jamiel Lynch, Sharif Paget, Rebekah Riess and Chris Boyette contributed to this report.