Henryville High School was destroyed after powerful storms hit the town. Photo: AP

Powerful storms stretching from the US Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes in the north have wrecked two small towns and killed at least eight people in the second deadly tornado outbreak this week.

The storm system tore roofs off schools and homes and damaged a maximum security prison.

Authorities reported the eight deaths in the state of Indiana, where Marysville was levelled and nearby Henryville also suffered extreme damage.

A wall is seen ripped off a building after a tornado swept through Henryville. Photo: AP

Each is home to about 2000 people.

“Marysville is completely gone,” said Clark County Sheriff’s Department Maj. Chuck Adams.

Aerial footage from a TV news helicopter flying over Henryville showed numerous wrecked houses, some with their roofs torn off and many surrounded by debris. The video also shows a mangled school bus protruding from the side of a one-story building and dozens of overturned semi-trailers strewn around the smashed remains of a truck stop.

An Associated Press reporter in Henryville said the high school was destroyed and the second floor had been ripped off the middle school next door. Classroom chairs were scattered on the ground outside, trees were uprooted and cars had huge dents from baseball-sized hail. Authorities said school was in session when the tornado hit, but there were only minor injuries there.

Afterward, volunteers pushed shopping carts full of water and food up the street and handed it out to people. The rural town is the home of Indiana’s oldest state forest and the birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Col. Harland Sanders.

Ernie Hall, 68, weathered the tornado inside his tiny home near the high school. Hall says he saw the twister coming down the road toward his house, whipping up debris in its path.

He and his wife ran into an interior room and used a mattress to block the door as the tornado struck. It destroyed his car and blew out the picture window overlooking his porch.

“There was no mistaking what it was,” he said.

The powerful storm system was also causing problems in states far to the south, including Alabama and Tennessee where dozens of houses were also damaged. The threat of tornadoes was expected to last until late Friday. The outbreak comes two days after an earlier round of storms killed 13 people in the midwest and south.

At least 20 homes were badly damaged and six people were hospitalised in the Chattanooga, Tennessee, area after strong winds and hail lashed the area.

In Cleveland, another Tennessee town, Blaine Lawson and his wife Billie were watching the weather when the power went out. Just as they began to seek shelter, strong winds ripped the roof off their home. Neither were hurt.

“It just hit all at once,” said Blaine Lawson, 76. “Didn’t have no warning really. The roof, insulation and everything started coming down on us. It just happened so fast that I didn’t know what to do. I was going to head to the closet but there was just no way. It just got us.”

Thousands of schoolchildren in several states were sent home as a precaution and several Kentucky universities were closed. The Huntsville, Alabama, mayor said students in area schools sheltered in hallways as severe weather passed in the morning.

An apparent tornado also damaged a state maximum security prison about 16 kilometres from Huntsville, but none of the facility’s 2100 inmates escaped. Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said there were no reports of injuries but the roof was damaged on two large prison dormitories that each hold about 250 men.

In California, a late winter storm that dumped at least 1.8 metres of snow in parts of the Sierra Nevada mountains created ripe conditions on Friday for snow sports enthusiasts but also posed avalanche dangers, as one man died while skiing in back country.

AP

Not on my watch … Anthony Albanese dismisses the idea of a second airport near Sydney. Photo: Lee Besford

THE township of Wilton, 27 kilometres south-west of Campbelltown, has emerged as a possible second airport site for Sydney, provided the state and federal governments reverse decades of inaction and disagreement on the issue.

The federal Minister for Transport, Anthony Albanese, yesterday released the report of a two-year-long study into Sydney’s aviation needs. But Mr Albanese immediately rejected two of the study’s main recommendations, and the state government dismissed the whole idea of a second airport anywhere near Sydney.

The study said Badgerys Creek, acquired by the federal government between 1986 and 1991, was the clear best location for a second airport site. But Mr Albanese ruled out Badgerys Creek and instead said he would investigate Wilton, the report’s second-best option.

The NSW Minister for Transport, Gladys Berejiklian, re-iterated the state’s opposition to another airport in the Sydney basin and said high-speed rail needed to be part of the solution.

The 3200-page report released by Mr Albanese yesterday documented the pressing capacity constraints on Sydney Airport. Within a year, the report said, there would be no extra slots available for flights from regional NSW to land at Sydney.

By 2020, there would be no peak hour slots available for any extra flights to land in the morning and afternoon. And by 2027, the report said, there will be no room for any extra flights at any time of the day.

This would cost the national economy $60 billion by 2060, the report said. And it would lead to flight delays across the country. ”The costs of doing nothing are enormous,” Mr Albanese said.

The study, which looked at 34 potential airport site, showed that construction costs at Badgerys Creek would be marginally cheaper than at Wilton.

Building a single-runway airport that could only accommodate domestic flights would cost about $1.7 billion at either site, or $2 billion to $4 billion when transport links were included.

Building a parallel-runway airport that could accommodate international flights would cost about $5.3 billion to construct, but between $7 billion and $11 billion if the supporting infrastructure was included.

But the main advantage of Badgerys Creek was that it was closer to Sydney. The study found an airport at Wilton would become commercially viable only by 2030, unless there was rapid development to the south-west of Campbelltown.

Mr Albanese said the refusal to consider Badgerys Creek was ”a commitment that we gave at the last two elections and we believe that’s appropriate”.

The report said the existing RAAF base at Richmond was of little use as an expansion airport. And it ruled out the option of expanding Canberra Airport and linking it by fast rail to Sydney.

The other recommendation Mr Albanese rejected was to lift the hourly cap in flight movements at from 80 to 85. Instead, he will write to the owners of Sydney Airport, who have first refusal on building a second site.

The NSW government rejected Mr Albanese’s offer to release the study together. Ms Berejiklian said it had been ”very clear that we do not support another airport in the Sydney Basin”.

As reported in the Herald yesterday, the predicted growth in flights at the current airport means the ability to share noise using the airport’s east-west runway will soon be exhausted.