http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110427/ap_on_re_us/us_severe_weatherBy HOLBROOK MOHR and JAY REEVES, Associated Press – 7 mins ago
JEFF BUSBY PARK, Miss. – A wave of thunderstorms with winds blowing near hurricane force strafed the South on Wednesday, killing at least 15 people from Arkansas to Alabama, including a father struck by a tree while protecting his daughter at a Mississippi campsite.
The system laced with tornadoes spread destruction Tuesday night and Wednesday from Texas to Georgia. An earlier flare-up of storms this week had already killed 10 people in Arkansas and one in Mississippi.
Forecasters warned that even worse weather could be on its way. The system was forecast to hit Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky on Wednesday night and then the Carolinas.
"Today is the day you want to be careful," said Greg Carbin of the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma.
On Wednesday morning, a Louisiana police officer on a camping trip in Choctaw County, Miss., was killed when a towering sweetgum tree fell onto his tent as he shielded his young daughter with his body, said Kim Korthuis, a supervisor with the National Park Service.
The girl wasn't hurt.
The 9-year-old girl was brought to a motorhome about 100 feet away where campsite volunteer Greg Maier was staying with his wife, Maier said. He went back to check on the father and found him dead.
"She wasn't hurt, just scared and soaking wet," Maier said.
Her father, Lt. Wade Sharp, had been with the Covington Police Department for 19 years.