At least 13 people have been killed by tornadoes and flooding in the south and midwest, including a two-year-old girl who died after being hit by a falling soccer goalpost in Tennessee.

Tornadoes hit several small towns in east Texas, killing four people. Three people were killed by flooding and winds in Arkansas, with officials saying two small children were missing.

In Missouri two people were killed by flood waters and two fatalities were reported in Mississippi, one of whom was a seven-year-old boy electrocuted after unplugging a golf cart.

Flooding closed part of Interstate 44 near Hazelgreen, Missouri, and officials expected it would be at least a day before the highway reopened. Interstate 70 in western Kansas was closed because crews were waiting for snow falling at three to four inches an hour being blown by 35mph winds to subside.

An Arkansas volunteer fire department chief was killed while working during storms in north-central Arkansas, state police said.



In Tennessee, the metro Nashville police department posted on its Twitter page on Sunday evening that Melanie Espinoza Rodriguez was killed after being struck by the heavy, metal goalpost. She was taken to Vanderbilt children’s hospital where she was pronounced dead.

BREAKING: 2-year-old girl has died after being struck by a heavy metal soccer goal that blew over in high winds at 2310 Antioch Pike. — Metro Nashville PD (@MNPDNashville) April 30, 2017

Rescuers in north-west Arkansas continued on Sunday to look for an 18-month-old girl and a four-year-old boy who were in a vehicle swept off a bridge by floodwaters in Hindsville, the Madison county sheriff’s office said.



In north-west Arkansas, a 10-year-old girl drowned in Springdale and the body of a woman who disappeared riding an inner tube on Saturday was found in a creek in Eureka Springs. A 65-year-old woman in DeWitt in the eastern part of the state was struck and killed in her home by a falling tree, officials said.

Severe storms including tornadoes killed four people in Texas, injured dozens more and left a trail of overturned vehicles, mangled trees and damaged homes, authorities said.

Search teams were going door to door, a day after storms cut a path of destruction 35 miles long and 15 miles wide in Van Zandt county, Canton mayor Lou Ann Everett said. The largely rural area is about 50 miles east of Dallas.



“It is heartbreaking and upsetting to say the least,” Everett told reporters.

Video from local television stations showed uprooted trees and overturned cars along rural, wet roadways, along with flattened homes. The storms flipped pickup trucks at a Dodge dealership in Canton and tore through the business.

Everett said authorities had confirmed four deaths, down from the five reported earlier, but cautioned that “it is a very fluid situation and that could change”. Searchers were using dogs to determine whether “anyone is trapped and needs help, or worse”, she said.

Fifty-six people were treated at three hospitals and six remained hospitalized on Sunday morning, two in critical condition, ETMC Regional Health Care Systems spokeswoman Rebecca Berkley said.

Officials urged people to stay away from the area. Rescue workers were dealing with gas leaks and downed power lines and trees, said Judge Don Kirkpatrick, the county’s chief executive. Fences also had been blown over, meaning livestock in the farming and ranching area were roaming free.

Cars and trucks are damaged after the walls blew out of the I-20 Dodge dealership. Photograph: Tom Fox/AP

“It’s a very dangerous situation out there,” Kirkpatrick said.

The National Weather Service confirmed at least three tornadoes swept through parts of three counties, with two of the twisters tracking nearly the entire south-to-north length of Van Zandt county.

The first reports of tornadoes came about 4.45pm on Saturday but emergency crews were hampered by continuing severe weather, Kirkpatrick said. “We’d be out there working and get a report of another tornado on the ground,” he said.

One resident, Ernestine Cook, told Dallas television station WFAA she rushed to a storm center just in time. “It hit so hard, so fast. It just kept moving,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it after 22 years of living here.”

Oncor, the electric utility that serves the area, reported more than 4,500 customers were without power late on Sunday morning. Everett said about 30 crews from around Texas were arriving to restore electricity. Five major transmission towers were toppled and some were difficult to reach. Cellphone service was described as “spotty”.

Canton is known throughout Texas and neighboring states for its First Monday Trading Days, a monthly flea market that draws thousands and goes back 150 years. Everett said the grounds of the market were spared from serious damage, although power lines and trees were down.

In Durant in central Mississippi on person died in the storms. The Mississippi emergency management agency did not give details. Later on Sunday the agency reported the death of a child from Rankin County near Jackson, who died from electric shock in flood waters. The sheriff’s department reported that a seven-year-old boy had unplugged an electric golf cart and dropped the cord in water on the ground and was electrocuted.