National Weather Service confirms 9 tornadoes in Mississippi on Monday

Carnesha Bennett walks through the remains of her mother's child care center in Louisville, Miss., Tuesday, April 29, 2014. The facility was leveled among with a automotive repair shop next door. Numerous businesses, residences and the community hospital were destroyed or heavily damaged after a tornado hit the east Mississippi community Monday. Louisville is the county seat and home to about 6,600 people. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Carnesha Bennett walks through the remains of her mother's child care center in Louisville, Miss., Tuesday, April 29, 2014. The facility was leveled among with a automotive repair shop next door. Numerous businesses, residences and the community hospital were destroyed or heavily damaged after a tornado hit the east Mississippi community Monday. Louisville is the county seat and home to about 6,600 people. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Carnesha Bennett walks through the remains of her mother’s child care center in Louisville, Miss., Tuesday, April 29, 2014. The facility was leveled among with a automotive repair shop next door. Numerous businesses, residences and the community hospital were destroyed or heavily damaged after a tornado hit the east Mississippi community Monday. Louisville is the county seat and home to about 6,600 people. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — At least nine tornadoes struck Mississippi on Monday, including an EF-4 or stronger in Louisville and EF-3 tornadoes in Tupelo and Richland, the National Weather Service said Tuesday.

Six of the eight in central Mississippi were confirmed by radar signatures for debris but had not been checked by ground crews, said Daniel Lamb, a meteorologist in the weather service’s Jackson office. They were generally along Interstate 20 between Vicksburg, Jackson and Meridian, he said.

“There may be more than that. Those are just the ones that we’re aware of from the radar,” he said.

Lamb said damage was still being assessed both in Lewisville and for the 4-mile track from Richland through Pearl.

The tornado that hit Tupelo left a 24-mile-long swath from 7 miles south-southwest of Tupelo to the town of Ozark in Itawamba County, said Marlene Mickelson, a meteorologist in the service’s Memphis, Tenn., office.

Meteorologists thought at first there had been two tornadoes in north Mississippi, she said. “We determined it was just one with a long track.”

Lamb said twisters identified by radar were southeast of Vicksburg in Warren County; north of Utica in Hinds County; north of Bolton, which is 20 miles north-northeast of Utica, in northern Hinds County; near Lake Caroline in Madison County; from Forest in Scott County to north of Lake in Newton County, a 9-mile track; and south of Decatur in Newton County.