March severe weather - 1K severe reports amid deadly outbreak

Severe season is certainly here and this weekend we saw more than 1,000 severe weather reports along and east of the Mississippi. Unfortunately, more than 30 people lost their lives during the peak of the outbreak.

Moderate and high risks - levels 4 and 5 out of 5 on the severe storm scale - were issued during the severe weather events on Friday and Saturday, respectively. Among the 1,000 severe weather reports were more than 70 tornado reports, most of them coming out of Missouri, Arkansas and Mississippi.

On Friday, this storm system rolled off of the Rockies into the Plains, initiating damaging wind gusts of 60+ mph that fueled multiple wildfires in the southern Plains, a dust storm and power outages. As the system shifted east, it met up with warm, southerly flow out of the Gulf which ignited the thunderstorms first in the central Plains and mid-Mississippi Valley before the South and Midwest got involved.

On Sunday, the storms shifted to the East Coast where multiple tornado warnings were issued, especially in western Pennsylvania where an enhanced risk - level 3 out of 5 - was active. As of Sunday evening, hundreds of thousands are without power from North Carolina to New York thanks to the severe line.

One of the hardest hit states was Missouri where 12 out of the 37 total deaths occurred, the most for each state impacted. The National Guard and the American Red Cross have both been deployed to Missouri to assist in the recovery efforts.

More than 60 tornadoes have been confirmed through Sunday morning with most of them occurring in Mississippi. An EF-4 rating (190 mph) was given to the Diaz, Ark., tornado. The National Weather Service will continue surveys of the damage across the affected states.