Tornado death toll reaches 17 in U.S., more stormy weather looms

(Reuters) - The death toll from tornadoes this week in the southern United States has climbed by two to 17, officials said on Saturday, as the nation braced for more stormy weather during the busy post-holiday travel weekend.

The bodies of a man and a woman missing in Benton County, Mississippi, since being caught in a tornado on Wednesday, were found by search and rescue teams on Saturday morning, said Greg Flynn, spokesman for Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.

The cause of their deaths was not disclosed, but they brought the total dead from tornadoes in Mississippi to 10, in addition to 56 people injured, officials said.

The tornado destroyed or damaged 403 homes over a seven-county area, Flynn said. In addition, flooding left 50 homes uninhabitable and closed 40 roads in Monroe County, which got 10 to 12 inches (about 25 to 30 cm) of rain, he said.

The tornadoes also killed six people in Tennessee and one other in Arkansas, bringing the three-state total to 17. A twister in Birmingham, Alabama, late on Friday afternoon damaged several homes, uprooted trees and caused a handful of minor injuries, police and weather officials reported.

Alabama and Mississippi will get another round of rain on Monday night, said Evan Duffey, meteorologist for AccuWeather.

In California, high winds on Saturday fanned a wildfire that closed parts of the much-traveled Highway 101 outside Los Angeles and forced evacuations, fire officials said.

Meanwhile, U.S. post-holiday travelers can expect a mix of stormy weather this weekend, with blizzard conditions in New Mexico and western Texas, while flooding rain hits the southern plains from south Texas through Indiana, forecasters said on Saturday.

The wet and snowy conditions come after a Christmas Day of unseasonable warmth on the East Coast, with record high temperatures set or tied in several cities including New York.

"It's going to be a pretty active weekend as far as winter weather," Duffey said. "It looks like it's going to be pretty bad across the southwest into the southern plains."

Duffey said that given the blizzard conditions expected for Saturday, anyone hoping to travel in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas "should try to get going as soon as you can" to beat the storm.

Those with flights through Dallas, St. Louis, Indianapolis and New Orleans should expect delays, according to AccuWeather.

(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski and Kevin Murphy; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Bill Rigby)