KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (Nov. 11) - Tornadoes and severe storms ripped through the eastern United States from the Great Lakes into the deep South on Sunday and early on Monday, wiping out small towns, killing at least 34 and leaving dozens missing.

Officials warned the death toll could rise as rescue workers began tearing into devastated homes and other structures amid fog and continuing rain in some areas. A fireman in Tennessee died during a rescue effort there.

Tennessee appeared to be the hardest hit, with 17 confirmed deaths from storms including the rescue worker. Dozens were missing in the mountainous eastern part of the state near Knoxville, were the tiny town of Mossy Grove was flattened.

There were also 11 deaths in Alabama, five in Ohio and one in Pennsylvania where a man died in the collapse of a home near Pittsburgh during a storm that had not been confirmed as a tornado.

"There's a three-mile long path of homes, most destroyed," said Ed Cate, assistant chief of the Knox County, Tennessee, Rescue Squad. "There are a lot of manufactured homes (prefabricated and trailers) ripped up and flipped over. Trees are uprooted, broken in half."

Cecil Whaley of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said the Mossy Grove tornado left an area of about one and a half square miles "wiped out." He said there were reports one storm in the remote mountain hamlet may have been an F-5, the most powerful on the Fujita scale of tornado intensity.

'MASS DESTRUCTION, DEATH'

Such storms occur in only about 1 percent of the 1,000 or so tornadoes which strike every year in the United States and can pack winds of from 261 to 318 miles per hour. Whaley said the damage in Tennessee was the most concentrated he'd seen in 20 years.

"It's mass destruction, death," a police officer in nearby Oliver Springs told the Knoxville News-Sentinel. "Mossy Grove is destroyed."

Cold autumn air sweeping eastward in a clash with warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico ignited the string of tightly coiled storms along the leading edge of the front.

Emergency management officials in several states reported homes flattened, trees uprooted and power lines down, leaving thousands without electricity.

There were at least 65 injuries reported in Tennessee and another 50 in Alabama. Tornado damage was also reported in northwestern South Carolina, but no injuries were reported.

The National Weather Service warned that more severe storms were possible in the southeast as the storm front moved toward the Atlantic coast. The Federal Aviation Administration said there were no significant airport delays on Monday morning as a result of the violent weather.

The weather service's Storm Prediction Center said it had reports of 45 tornadoes since early Sunday morning across a half dozen states, though not all of them were confirmed. It said the biggest concentrations were in north central Alabama, east central Tennessee and north central and northwest Ohio.

Roger Edwards, a forecaster at the center, said massive tornadic outbreaks are not unusual in November and that many of the same areas hit in the latest storms suffered damage from a similar outbreak in 1992.

'WE'VE BEEN HIT REAL HARD'

Generally speaking, though, the tornado season tends to be concentrated the spring.

In Alabama, at least 11 people were killed and 50 others injured by tornadoes in the northern part of the state on Sunday evening.

Nine of the fatalities occurred in Walker County, which bore the brunt of the destruction in the state. Lee Helms, director of the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, said emergency personnel were working in several counties to clear downed trees and power lines from roads and help direct people to emergency shelters.

"We're seeing pretty extensive structural damage and quite a tremendous amount of debris," said Helms, who added that an estimated 50,000 people had been left without power across Alabama. "We're working on ... clearing the roads to gain access to the most heavily damaged areas as well as housing storm victims in shelters in Walker County," Helms said.

Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman has declared a state of emergency across the state.

"We've been hit real hard," said Luther Lapner, chief of police in the tiny community of Carbon Hill in Walker County.

In Ohio, the storms took five lives mostly in the northwestern section of the state.

The deadliest tornado in U.S. history struck on March 18, 1925, killing 695 people on a 219-mile track through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. An April 3 and 4 outbreak of tornadoes in 1974 killed 310 in the United States and eight in Canada.

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Well that's the article! Hope everyone's okay down there!