Mississippi Tornado Outbreak: 14 Twisters Tear Through State, Damaging 400 Homes and Injuring 17

Fourteen tornadoes tore across central and southern Mississippi on Wednesday night, damaging roughly 400 homes, injuring at least 17 people and forcing the National Weather Service to issue back-to-back Tornado Emergencies in Lincoln and Lamar counties. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency confirmed the tally Thursday morning, and Governor Tate Reeves said the state was working with FEMA to assess what is shaping up to be one of the most destructive tornado outbreaks Mississippi has seen in years.

The heaviest damage struck Lincoln and Lamar counties, where supercell thunderstorms produced violent twisters that crossed Interstate 55 between Brookhaven and Hattiesburg shortly after 8 p.m. local time. In Lincoln County, all 12 confirmed injuries occurred at Wash Trailer Park near Bogue Chitto, where a mobile home community was leveled and rescuers used dogs and thermal cameras to dig survivors from the wreckage. In Lamar County, officials said about 275 homes were damaged in and around Purvis, with one resident hospitalized.

The town of Purvis, a community of about 2,300 just south of Hattiesburg, took a direct hit. Pastor Jimmy Breazeale of Coaltown Baptist Church told local reporters that his congregation had gathered for a Wednesday evening service when the tornado warnings began. The group huddled in an interior hallway, locked arms and started to sing "Amazing Grace" as the roof was peeled off above them. "We could feel the building shaking. We could hear glass breaking. And we just kept singing," Breazeale said. No one in the church was seriously hurt.

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said the outbreak was driven by a potent low-pressure system that pulled deep Gulf moisture into a warm, unstable air mass over the Lower Mississippi Valley. Forecasters logged 14 tornado reports, 30 damaging-wind reports and 26 large-hail reports between Wednesday afternoon and early Thursday, with hail up to baseball size in the Texas Hill Country and tennis-ball-size hail in Montgomery, Alabama. Entergy Mississippi said more than 60,000 customers lost power at the peak of the storms.

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Cameron Hamilton said preliminary damage assessment teams were already on the ground, and the White House said it had been briefed on the outbreak. Reeves activated the Mississippi National Guard for search and recovery operations and warned residents that more storms were possible later in the week. "We are going to rebuild Purvis. We are going to rebuild Bogue Chitto," Reeves said at a Thursday afternoon news conference in Brookhaven. "But right now the focus is making sure every single person is accounted for."

Tornado season runs from March through June across the Deep South, but meteorologists at the National Weather Service Jackson office said Wednesday's outbreak was unusual for its intensity at this point in May. Several of the tornadoes received preliminary EF-3 ratings, with damage surveys still underway. Mississippi has now logged more than 60 tornadoes in 2026, putting the state on pace for one of its worst years on record.