For the fifth day in a row severe thunderstorms and tornadoes are tearing across the US.  

As severe weather moved eastward, the devastation mounted today in parts of the Midwest where hundreds mourned the deaths of loved ones and clung to hopes they’d be found alive following a wave of powerful tornadoes.

The National Weather Service has issued tornado watches through Thursday night (Friday afternoon NZT) for parts of Pennsylvania, New York and Vermont, signaling that “conditions are favorable for the development of tornadoes” albeit falling short of a more grave, and more certain, warning.

Severe thunderstorm warnings and watches, meanwhile, also extended from Alabama north along the Appalachian mountains to West Virginia on Thursday evening.

Residents in those states hoped to avoid the fate of those to the west, where thousands were still sorting through rubble and coming to grips with the aftermath of twisters that struck earlier this week.

The worst-hit community is Joplin, Missouri. The tornado that hit that city Sunday night was the single deadliest in the United States since modern record-keeping began 61 years ago.

Newton County Coroner Mark Bridges told CNN on Thursday that more than 125 bodies of thsoe who died as a result of the EF5 twister — which had winds topping 325km/h — are in temporary refrigeration units.
 

Today’s new threat / The Weather Channel

– CNN, The Weather Channel