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While rescuers scramble to dig out any remaining survivors from a weekend tornado that killed 116, residents in Joplin, Missouri, are bracing for the possibility of more tornadoes on Tuesday.
"There's no way to figure out how to pick up the pieces as is," Sarah Hale, a lifelong Joplin resident, said Tuesday. "We have to have faith the weather will change."
The National Weather Service warned there was a 45% chance of another tornado outbreak -- with the peak time between 4 p.m. and midnight Tuesday -- over a wide swath including parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nebraska and Missouri.
Joplin is also in the area.
But if Monday's rescue efforts are any indication, even severe weather might not hamper the search for survivors.
City Manager Mark Rohr told reporters that more than 40 agencies are on the ground in the southwest Missouri city, with two first responders struck by lightning as they braved relentless rain and high winds searching for survivors.
By Monday night, they found 17 people alive. But many, including Will Norton, remain missing.
The 18-year-old was driving home from his high school graduation Sunday when the tornado destroyed the Hummer H3 he and his father were in.
© APMay 21: Smoke plumes from the Grimsvotn volcano, which lies under the Vatnajokull glacier, about 120 miles east of the capital, Rejkjavik, which began erupting Saturday for the first time since 2004.
The country's main airport was closed and pilots were warned to steer clear of Iceland as areas close to the Grimsvotn (GREEMSH-votn) volcano were plunged into darkness Sunday evening.
Officials appeared to be responding to the ash with a radically different approach than last year, when European aviation authorities were sharply criticized for closing large swathes of airspace in response to the April 2010 eruption of another Icelandic volcano. Many airlines said authorities overestimated the danger to planes from the abrasive ash, and overreacted by closing airspace for five days. Thousands of flights were grounded, airlines lost millions of dollars and millions of travelers were stranded, many sleeping on airport floors across northern Europe.
Britain's Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Jonathan Nicholson said authorities had no plans to close airspace, even though an ash cloud classified by Met Office spokesman David Britton as high-density was expected to cover parts of Scotland by 6 a.m. local time (0500 GMT; midnight EDT) Tuesday.
Amazing double rainbow Seen over Spingfield MO just after a deadly tornado Rips through Joplin.
It's been one long series of natural disasters this year - and now it looks like another is on the way.
The focus may soon be shifting from the epic flooding in the Mississippi Valley to Westwern states where enormous winter snows have piled up on mountain ranges.
More than 90 sites from Montana to New Mexico and California to Colorado have record snowpack totals on the ground for late May.
The focus may soon be shifting from the epic flooding in the Mississippi Valley to Westwern states where enormous winter snows have piled up on mountain ranges.
More than 90 sites from Montana to New Mexico and California to Colorado have record snowpack totals on the ground for late May.
© APUnbelievable snow: It's late May and a vehicle faces 23 feet of snow at Rock Cut on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado
© David Zucchino, Los Angeles TimesLouisiana wildlife officials Fred Kimmel, left, Travis Dufour, center, and Derrick Brasseaux check a soybean field for signs of wild animals fleeing rising floodwaters.
That unsurprising fact of nature has added a new complexity to the daily efforts of Travis Dufour, a Louisiana state wildlife biologist. He spends his days in a pickup truck, bouncing along levees and farm roads in search of displaced deer, black bears, alligators, wild turkeys, feral hogs and the occasional armadillo.
Mostly, Dufour rides herd on deer. It's his job to keep deer and people - and especially motor vehicles - from colliding as deer flee the impending Great Flood of 2011.
© BBC News / Met Office
BA, KLM, Easyjet, Loganair and Eastern Airways have all cancelled flights on Tuesday, as ministers said some flights over the Atlantic were delayed.
The threat of further disruption led US President Barack Obama to fly out of the Republic of Ireland a day early to get to London for a state visit.
© Halldora Kristen Unnarsdottir / APGrimsvotn volcano
© Stefan Wermuth/ReutersPresident Barack Obama and first lady Michelle on Airforce One at Dublin airport.
The US president flew to London on Monday evening just hours after he received a rapturous reception in central Dublin from more than 25,000 people during a speech in which he pledged that America would continue to stand by peace-makers in Northern Ireland.
A White House spokesman confirmed that concerns over the ash cloud from the Grimsvötn volcano forced the presidential entourage to make a swifter than expected exit from the Republic.
© AFP/Getty ImagesAn image released by Nasa on Sunday shows smoke billowing from the Grimsvotn, Iceland's most active volcano.
The Grimsvotn volcano began erupting on Sunday, causing flights to be cancelled at Iceland's main Keflavik airport after it sent a plume of ash smoke and steam 12 miles into the air.
However experts said the eruption was unlikely to have the dramatic impact that the Eyjafjallajökull volcano had in April last year, when flights were cancelled over the UK and much of Europe for several days.
Paul Mott, forecaster at Meteogroup, said ash from the volcano could potentially reach the UK by Tuesday.
The deadly tornado that ripped through Joplin, Mo., Sunday evening, killing at least 89 people, intensified with unprecedented speed, according to storm trackers.
The supercell thunderstorm that produced the devastating twister formed over Kansas. The National Weather Service received its first report of the tornado at 5:34 p.m. local time, from west of the Missouri-Kansas border.
Seven minutes later, there were reports of a tornado within Joplin's city limits, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) east of the first sighting.
"Every storm is a little different, but this storm went from what was just a funnel cloud to a very strong, very large and very wide and obviously very damaging tornado in a very short time," in under 10 minutes, said Andy Boxell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Springfield, Mo.
"It's something that I've not seen personally, and certainly it's a rare thing to see," Boxell told OurAmazingPlanet.
Comment: This eruption may well merit caution, but remember that we've been here before and been bamboozled before:
'Ashteria' is a Pretext to Shut Down International Air Travel