Extreme weather conditions continue to threaten parts of the southern plains and midwest on Thursday, after six people were killed earlier this week in a powerful storm that wreaked havoc across multiple states.
As damage assessments continued in the south, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) warned of critical fire conditions for parts of south-east New Mexico and western Texas on Thursday.
Fires have broken out across parts of southern Appalachia this week, with 126 still actively burning in North Carolina, according to the state forest service.
Meanwhile a new winter storm system is moving east from California and is expected to bring 1-2ft of snow across high elevations across the Mogollon Rim of Arizona, the Wasatch of Utah, western Colorado and parts of Wyoming.
The deaths - three people in Mississippi and three in Nebraska - occurred on Tuesday, local authorities said, as a winter weather system brought blizzard conditions, strong winds, flash floods and tornadoes for tens of millions of people through Wednesday morning.
In Mississippi, a man was electrocuted while trying to put out a grass fire caused by a downed power line, while falling trees killed another man and a woman in separate incidents. Six more people in the state were injured by the severe weather, said Governor Tate Reeves.
In Nebraska, severe winter storms brought havoc to the roads with hundreds of traffic incidents including a head-on crash between a car and a tractor-trailer that killed three people, the Nebraska state patrol said.
The weather system then moved east, and more than 10,000 electricity customers were without power in Michigan on Thursday morning, according to Power Outage.us. In Texas, almost 16,000 homes and businesses are also without power.
