"No tornado warnings are issued yet for the area, but the conditions could be ripe for some in the afternoon"
By Rich McKay
ATLANTA, April 15 (Reuters) - Deadly spring storms that spawned tornadoes in the U.S. South and blizzards in the Plains and Midwest will continue to blast across the region Sunday bringing more snow, rain and wind that have shut down airports and left thousands without power.
The storms stretch from the Gulf Coast to the Midwest and were moving into the Northeast and New England Sunday, said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist with the NWS's Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
About a foot of snow could fall Sunday on parts of northern Wisconsin, upstate Michigan and North Dakota, he said.
The threat of violent thunderstorms stretch from a corridor from the Florida peninsula to North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, said Chenard.
"No tornado warnings are issued yet for the area, but the conditions could be ripe for some in the afternoon," he said. On Friday, the system produced 17 reports of tornadoes in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Texas, the weather service said. Four people were injured and 160 buildings damaged in a possible tornado in northwest Arkansas, local media reported. At least two tornadoes packing winds up to 90 miles (145 km) per hour was reported in Mississippi this weekend, the NWS said.
The weather is blamed for two traffic fatalities in western Nebraska and Wisconsin, according to National Public Radio.
The storms also killed a 1-year-old girl when a tree fell on a recreational vehicle where she was sleeping, the sheriff's office in Bossier Parish, Louisiana said. More than 750 flights in and out of airports in Minnesota and Toronto were canceled Saturday and into Sunday, the website flightaware.com reported.
The Yankees-Detroit Tigers game was rained out Saturday, and the planned double-header for Sunday could also be cancelled as more rain and snow are expected, according to The Detroit Free Press.
About 70,000 homes and businesses were without power early Sunday across Michigan, New York, Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi, according to the website Poweroutage.us.
(Reporting by Rich McKay, additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien; Editing by Adrian Croft)
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