Mother and daughter killed in a tornado in a small East Tennessee community

(CNN) — The year’s first deadly US tornado struck after dark Thursday, killing two people in a small East Tennessee community as the first of five back-to-back, jet stream-driven winter storms pummeled the eastern United States.

Severe weather blasted through Morgan County, killing a mother and daughter in the same home, the county Emergency Management & Homeland Security office said Friday. No ages or other identifying information were given.

Three injuries also were reported, the agency said, in a county that is no stranger to deadly and damaging tornadoes. More than a dozen homes were damaged by the storm, county officials said Friday afternoon.

“That community in particular is for whatever reason a hotbed for that kind of activity,” county emergency management spokesperson Aaron Evans said. “They’re resilient people … they’ll bounce back.”

The Morgan County tornado – with a preliminary intensity of EF2, according to the National Weather Service – slammed the small communities of Deer Lodge and Sunbright around 8:27 p.m. and caused “severe property damage,” according to the county. The twister in Deer Lodge had a maximum wind speed of 135 mph, a weather service survey team found – just 1 mph shy of EF3 strength, to which it still could be upgraded.

“It, honest to God, sounded like a freight train coming through the area,” Morgan County resident Chas Vinal told CNN affiliate WVLT.

More than 100 emergency responders were deployed in the county, the emergency management office said, including dozens from a Tennessee Highway Patrol strike team, who will “look for any people that are missing, and we assist in any way we can,” said state Highway Patrol Capt. Stacey Heatherly.

An EF1 tornado, meanwhile, also hit Thursday night in the community of Thorn Hill in Grainger County, Tennessee, northeast of Knoxville and about 100 miles east by road from Deer Lodge, the weather service said. It was only the fourth confirmed tornado in the county on record, according to the weather service. Several buildings and vehicles had moderate damage, and no one was injured, county Emergency Management Director Jeff Atkins told CNN.

A family of farmers in Grainger County said four of their buildings were damaged or destroyed, WVLT reported.

“We knew it was bad, but we didn’t realize it was this bad,” Bob Coffey told WVLT. “You know, there’s debris all in the hay fields and the pasture fields and I don’t know when we’ll ever get it all picked up.”

As daylight arrived Friday, damage assessments in Morgan County began.

“We’ll get a better picture of what the scene looks like, how much damage there is,” Evans told WVLT. “Teams will be able to get a better grip and grasp on the area to see how many homes were damaged.”

Gov. Bill Lee visited Morgan County Friday to tour the destruction wrought by the tornado.

“It’s heartbreaking but also heartening to see how friends and neighbors have been coming out to serve,” he told WVLT. “This is a remarkable place and a remarkable people. The people here are inspiring.”

Nearly 2% of Morgan County had no power as of Friday evening, down from 8% earlier in the day, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us.

The damaging winds had arrived more than two hours after sunset, making it hard for residents to see the danger. Nighttime tornadoes are twice as likely to be deadly as those occurring during the day, a 2022 study found.

February tornadoes are not rare, but they are less common than in spring. February saw 45 tornadoes last year across the country, compared with 527 in May.

While Tennessee averages three tornadoes in February, Thursday’s was the first in the month in Morgan County, the National Weather Service office in Morristown said. East Tennessee has only had 12 tornadoes on record in February, with the last one being 14 years ago in 2011, the weather service said.

Several tornadoes have touched down in Morgan County since 1965, including an F3 in 2002, which killed seven people some 20 miles southeast of Deer Lodge and an EF1 tornado last year in Sunbright.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN meteorologists Mary Gilbert and Robert Shackleford contributed to this report.

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