"We had a beautiful neighbourhood. Now it's hell," said Bonnie Brawner, 80, who lives in Hartsville, a community about an hour from Nashville, where a natural gas plant that was struck by a twister erupted in spectacular flames up to 125 metres high.

"It looks like the Lord took a Brillo pad and scrubbed the ground," said Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who surveyed the damage from a helicopter.

"All the clues were there. It was just unfortunate that it came out the way it did," prediction centre director Joseph Schaefer said.