Deadly Tornado Slams Tennessee: Everything We Know

One person was killed after severe thunderstorms ripped through the Middle Tennessee region on Wednesday, triggering a “violent” tornado to touch down in Maury County, according to weather officials.

The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a tornado emergency—the service’s highest alert level—for Maury, Williamson and Rutherford counties just before 6 p.m. CDT, according to The Tennessean. NWS Nashville’s office shortly afterward posted to X, formerly Twitter, that a “large, violent” tornado was “on the ground” near Spring Hill, roughly 36 miles south of Nashville.

Officials with the Maury Country Regional Hospital confirmed to local news outlets that at least one person died from storm-related injuries. Three other individuals suffered non-life-threatening injuries and another was in serious condition, according to reports from The Tennessean and WKRN.

Additional information about the death was not immediately available. Newsweek reached out to the Maury County Regional Hospital via email for additional information on Wednesday night.

The Context

Tornado watches were issued for six states ahead of Wednesday’s storms into early Thursday morning by NWS. Weather officials said that preliminary assessments found that a EF-2 tornado touched down in Hot Springs, Arkansas, just after 12:30 a.m. CDT Wednesday, according to KARK.

A tornado emergency was also issued for parts of Michigan on Tuesday evening—a first for the Great Lakes State—as severe storms ripped through portions of Michigan as well as Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri.

What We Know

Property damage and scattered debris were reported in the area by the Maury County Office of Emergency Management, which in a series of posts to Facebook also urged residents to stay home and off the roadways while the tornado tore through the county. Video of the twister was also captured by a station camera with the Tennessee Valley Weather group, which was shared to X by radar analyst Bryan Wilson.

Threats of high winds, hail and flooding are expected to continue into early Thursday morning for parts of Middle Tennessee. A flash-food emergency was also issued north of Nashville in Sumner and Robertson counties. The NWS said in a weather alert that water rescues in those areas were ongoing and that the flooding was life-threatening.

Storm-related damage was also reported in parts of North Carolina on Wednesday evening. According to USA Today’s power outage tracker, as of 8 p.m. CDT, over 100,000 people were left without power across the state after the storms. Over 31,000 outages were reported across Tennessee at the time of publication.