The tornado tore a path nearly a mile wide and decimated neighborhoods as it raked cities from the central western border with Louisiana northeastward to Alabama. It leveled a church, sheared roofs off houses, overturned cars, snapped down hundreds of trees and plunged large swaths of the state in darkness as it toppled power lines.
The same storm system that unleashed Saturday's twister delivered severe weather to other parts of the South on Sunday, with tornadoes hitting Alabama and South Carolina.
On Sunday, a tornado in Darlington County in northern South Carolina overturned as many as four mobile homes and toppled trees and downed power lines.
Three people were hospitalized with minor injuries, according to Linwood Epps of the county's emergency management agency. He said that the local Cain Elementary school was damaged, with part of its roof missing.
The National Weather Service on Sunday gave the Mississippi tornado a preliminary rating of at least 3 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale of 0-5, with wind speeds of up to 160 miles per hour and a preliminary path width of one and a half miles.