On Friday afternoon, search teams fanned out across the central Tennessee city of Murfreesboro, looking for anyone trapped in rubble.
Clyde Atkinson, spokesman for the Murfreesboro Police Department, said he believes there were three to five tornado touchdowns mostly in the northern and western parts of the city of about 100,000.
As emergency crews worked their way through neighborhoods, they emblazoned homes with a spray-painted "c," indicating they had been checked.
Reports of destruction were widespread across the region Friday, with funnel clouds spotted in Kentucky and Alabama and devastating winds, huge hail and heavy rain reported in several states. The damage was worst in Rutherford County, Tenn., some 30 miles northeast of Nashville.
At least 41 people were injured there, four of them critically. In Murfreesboro, at least three dozen homes were destroyed. Roofs were peeled from at least a dozen homes, and a bulldozer cleared limbs and other debris from streets.
The bodies of Kori Bryant, in her mid-20s, and 9-week-old Olivia Bryant were found near their driveway. The mother was apparently trying to get her baby into a car
- both were found outside, and the infant was in a car seat, rescue official Randy White said.
Andrew Piro, 23, who was on his way to work when the tornado struck, told the Knoxville News-Sentinel he came upon a man who said his brother's wife and child were missing.
"Outside under the rubble, we found the wife," Piro said. "She was right beside the driveway, about 20 feet away from the house. She was under a bunch of wood, I guess part of the roof. We found the baby strapped into a car seat, about another 20 feet away under a tree. It broke my heart."
Joe Spencer, 23, a student at Middle Tennessee State University, said he had only moments to react but survived a direct hit on his house.
"I was going to open the door to see what was going on and I looked straight at a tornado," Spencer said.
He yelled at his brother to take shelter in one of the home's bathrooms and then ran to the other, jumping into the bathtub while holding his dog, Lloyd. All were uninjured.
