LONDON, Ky. — More severe storms were expected to roll across the central U.S. this week following the weather-related deaths of more than two dozen people and a devastating Kentucky tornado.

The National Weather Service said a “multitude of hazardous weather” would impact the U.S. over the next several days — from thunderstorms and potentially baseball-sized hail on the Plains, to heavy mountain snow in the West and dangerous heat in the South.

Areas at risk of thunderstorms include communities in Kentucky and Missouri that were hit by Friday’s tornadoes.

In London, Kentucky, people whose houses were destroyed scrambled Sunday to put tarps over salvageable items or haul them away for safe storage, said Zach Wilson. His parents’ house was in ruins, their belongings scattered.

“We’re trying the hardest to get anything that looks of value and getting it protected, especially pictures and papers and things like that,” he said.

Here’s the latest on the recent storms, some tornado history and where to look out for the next weather impacts.

Deadly storms claim dozens of lives

At least 19 people were killed and 10 seriously injured in Kentucky, where a tornado on Friday damaged hundreds of homes and tossed vehicles in southeastern Laurel County. 0fficials said the death toll could rise and that three people remained in critical condition Sunday.

Wilson said he raced to his parents’ home in London, Kentucky, after the storm.

“It was dark and still raining but every lightning flash, it was lighting up your nightmares: Everything was gone,” he said. “The thankful thing was me and my brother got here and got them out of where they had barricaded themselves.”

Survey teams were expected on the ground Monday so the state can apply for federal disaster assistance, Gov. Andy Beshear said. Some of the two dozen state roads that had closures could take days to reopen.

In St. Louis, five people died and 38 were injured as the storm system swept through on Friday, according to Mayor Cara Spencer. More than 5,000 homes in the city were affected, she said.

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On Sunday, city inspectors were going through damaged areas to condemn unsafe structures, Spencer said. She asked for people not to sightsee in damaged areas.

A tornado that started in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton traveled at least 8 miles (13 kilometers), had 150-mph (241-kph) winds and had a maximum width of 1 mile (1.6 kilometers), according to the weather service. It touched down in the area of Forest Park, home to the St. Louis Zoo and the site of the 1904 World’s Fair and the Olympic Games that same year.

In Scott County, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of St. Louis, a tornado killed two people, injured several others and destroyed multiple homes, Sheriff Derick Wheetley wrote on social media.

The weather system spawned tornadoes in Wisconsin and temporarily enveloped parts of Illinois — including Chicago — in a pall of dust.

Two people were killed in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., by falling trees while driving.

The storms hit after the Trump administration cut staffing of weather service offices, with outside experts worrying about how it would affect warnings in disasters such as tornadoes.

A history of tornadoes

The majority of the world’s tornadoes occur in the U.S., which has about 1,200 annually.

Researchers in 2018 found that deadly tornadoes were happening less frequently in the traditional “Tornado Alley” of Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas and more frequently in parts of the more densely populated and tree-filled South.

They can happen any time of day or night, but certain times of the year bring peak “tornado season.” That’s from May into early June for the southern Plains and earlier in the spring on the Gulf Coast.

The deadliest tornado in Kentucky’s history was hundreds of yards wide when it tore through downtown Louisville’s business district in March 1890, collapsing multistory buildings including one with 200 people inside. Seventy-six people were killed.

The last tornado to cause mass fatalities in Kentucky was a December 2021 twister that lasted almost five hours. It traveled some 165 miles (266 kilometers), leaving a path of destruction that included 57 dead and more than 500 injured, according to the weather service. Officials recorded at least 41 tornadoes during that storm, which killed at least 77 people statewide.

On the same day, a deadly tornado struck the St. Louis area, killing six people at an Amazon facility in nearby Illinois.

More storms threaten in coming days

Thunderstorms with potentially damaging winds were forecast for a region stretching from northeast Colorado to central Texas.

And tornadoes will again be a threat particularly from central Kansas to Oklahoma, according to the weather service.

Meanwhile, triple-digit temperatures were forecast for parts of south Texas with the potential to break daily records. The hot, dry air also sets the stage for critical wildfire conditions through early this week in southern New Mexico and West Texas.

Up to a foot of snow was expected in parts of Idaho and western Montana.

Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

The St. Paul area has many successful and interesting businesses worth shining a light on.

The Pioneer Press and the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce recently embarked on a new project to do just that: shine a spotlight on local businesses and business people.

The first of our Spotlight on Business items, featuring Urban Growler Brewing, ran in print editions on Sunday, April 13. We thought we’d like to share them with our online readers, too.

Check back for new features.

Urban Growler Brewing

Sunrise Banks

Mastel’s Health Foods

CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon said Monday that she is resigning after four years, the latest fallout at the network as its parent company considers settling a lawsuit with President Donald Trump over a “60 Minutes” with his former political opponent.

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McMahon, who has led both the network news division and news for the CBS-owned stations, said in an email message to staff that “it’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward. It’s time to move on and for this organization to move forward with new leadership.”

McMahon has made clear she opposes settling with Trump — just like “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens, who quit last month.

Trump has sued CBS, alleging it edited an interview with 2024 Democratic opponent Kamala Harris last fall to benefit her. CBS News has denied that. CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, is in talks to potentially settle Trump’s lawsuit. At the same time, Paramount Global is seeking administration approval of a merger with Skydance Media.

George Cheeks, co-CEO of Paramount and head of the CBS network, said McMahon’s top deputies, CBS News president Tom Cibrowski and CBS Stations president Jennifer Mitchell, will report directly to him.

McMahon, in her note, said that “the past few months have been challenging.”

“I have spent the last few months shoring up our businesses and making sure the right leaders are in place, and I have no doubt they will continue to set the standard,” she said.

In addition to the tussle with Trump, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, has expressed unhappiness over some network coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza, including a “60 Minutes” piece this winter. Paramount began supervising “60 Minutes” stories in new ways, including asking former CBS News President Susan Zirinsky to look over some of its stories before they aired.

That extra layer contributed to Owens’ resignation. One of the show’s correspondents, Scott Pelley, said on the air that “none of us is happy” about the changes.

CBS News is also trying to establish the new anchor team of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois at its flagship “CBS Evening News” broadcast amid ratings troubles.

In his note to staff members, Cheeks praised McMahon for expanding local news at CBS stations and improving their competitive positions, along with improving the network’s digital offerings.

ATLANTA — President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to overhaul how U.S. elections are run includes a somewhat obscure reference to the way votes are counted. Voting equipment, it says, should not use ballots that include “a barcode or quick-response code.”

Those few technical words could have a big impact.

Voting machines that give all voters a ballot with one of those codes are used in hundreds of counties across 19 states. Three of them — Georgia, South Carolina and Delaware — use the machines statewide.

Some computer scientists, Democrats and left-leaning election activists have raised concerns about their use, but those pushing conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election have been the loudest, claiming without evidence that manipulation has already occurred. Trump, in justifying the move, said in the order that his intention was “to protect election integrity.”

Even some election officials who have vouched for the accuracy of systems that use coded ballots have said it’s time to move on because too many voters don’t trust them.

Colorado’s secretary of state, Democrat Jena Griswold, decided in 2019 to stop using ballots with QR codes, saying at the time that voters “should have the utmost confidence that their vote will count.” Amanda Gonzalez, the elections clerk in Colorado’s Jefferson County, doesn’t support Trump’s order but believes Colorado’s decision was a worthwhile step.

“We can just eliminate confusion,” Gonzalez said. “At the end of the day, that’s what I want — elections that are free, fair, transparent.”

Target for misinformation

Whether voting by mail or in person, millions of voters across the country mark their selections by using a pen to fill in ovals on paper ballots. Those ballots are then fed through a tabulating machine to tally the votes and can be retrieved later if a recount is needed.

In other places, people voting in person use a touch-screen machine to mark their choices and then get a paper record of their votes that includes a barcode or QR code. A tabulator scans the code to tally the vote.

Election officials who use that equipment say it’s secure and that they routinely perform tests to ensure the results match the votes on the paper records, which they retain. The coded ballots have nevertheless become a target of election conspiracy theories.

“I think the problem is super exaggerated,” said Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice. “I understand why it can appeal to certain parts of the public who don’t understand the way this works, but I think it’s being used to try to question certain election results in the past.”

Those pushing conspiracy theories related to the 2020 election have latched onto a long-running legal battle over Georgia’s voting system. In that case, a University of Michigan computer scientist testified that an attacker could tamper with the QR codes to change voter selections and install malware on the machines.

The testimony from J. Alex Halderman has been used to amplify Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, even though there is no evidence that any of the weaknesses he found were exploited.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, has defended the state’s voting system as secure. In March, the judge who presided over Halderman’s testimony declined to block the use of Georgia’s voting equipment but said the case had “identified substantial concerns about the administration, maintenance and security of Georgia’s electronic in-person voting system.”

Can the executive order ban coded ballots?

Trump’s election executive order is being challenged in multiple lawsuits. One has resulted in a preliminary injunction against a provision that sought to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.

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The section banning ballots that use QR or barcodes relies on a Trump directive to a federal agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which sets voluntary guidelines for voting systems. Not all states follow them.

Some of the lawsuits say Trump doesn’t have the authority to direct the commission because it was established by Congress as an independent agency.

While the courts sort that out, the commission’s guidelines say ballots using barcodes or QR codes should include a printed list of the voters’ selections so they can be checked.

Trump’s order exempts voting equipment used by voters with disabilities, but it promises no federal money to help states and counties shift away from systems using QR or barcodes.

“In the long run, it would be nice if vendors moved away from encoding, but there’s already evidence of them doing that,” said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a group that focuses on election technology and favors ending the use of QR and barcodes.

Counties in limbo

Kim Dennison, election coordinator of Benton County, Arkansas, estimated that updating the county’s voting system would cost around $400,000 and take up to a year.

Dennison said she has used equipment that relies on coded ballots since she started her job 15 years ago and has never found an inaccurate result during postelection testing.

“I fully and completely trust the equipment is doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing and not falsifying reports,” she said. “You cannot change a vote once it’s been cast.”

In Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County, voting machines that produce a QR code will be used in this year’s primary. But officials expect a manufacturer’s update later this year to remove the code before the November elections.

County Manager Romilda Crocamo said officials had not received any complaints from voters about QR codes but decided to make the change when Dominion Voting Systems offered the update.

The nation’s most populous county, Los Angeles, uses a system with a QR code that it developed over a decade and deployed in 2020 after passing a state testing and certification program.

The county’s chief election official, Dean Logan, said the system exceeded federal guidelines at the time and meets many of the standards outlined in the most recent ones approved in 2021. He said postelection audits have consistently confirmed its accuracy.

Modifying or replacing it would be costly and take years, he said. The county’s current voting equipment is valued at $140 million.

‘Train Wreck’ in Georgia?

Perhaps nowhere has the issue been more contentious than Georgia, a presidential battleground. It uses the same QR code voting system across the state.

Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, a lead plaintiff in the litigation over the system, said her group has not taken a position on Trump’s executive order but said the federal Election Assistance Commission should stop certifying machines that use barcodes.

The secretary of state said the voting system follows Georgia law, which requires federal certification at the time the system is bought. Nevertheless, the Republican-controlled legislature has voted to ban the use of QR codes but did not allocate any money to make the change — a cost estimated at $66 million.

Republicans said they want to replace the system when the current contract expires in 2028, but their law is still scheduled to take effect next year. GOP state Rep. Victor Anderson said there is no realistic way to “prevent the train wreck that’s coming.”

Associated Press writer Christina A. Cassidy contributed to this report.

Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Kramon on X: @charlottekramon.