By Alan Blinder and Patricia Mazzei

Photographs by Audra Melton

BEAUREGARD, Ala. — Becky Boyd’s phone alerted her on Sunday afternoon that a tornado was imminent, but she didn’t think much of it. Warnings had come before, and nothing had happened.

Then her sister called: A tornado was one road over. Get somewhere safe.

The ferocious storm — almost a mile wide with winds as powerful as a Category 5 hurricane — struck before she could reach the closet in her mobile home. Its force pushed her into the closet face-first as her entire house rolled onto a shed.

She survived. Twenty-three others in eastern Alabama — ranging in age from 6 to 89 — did not.

The modern era of pinpoint weather forecasting allowed the government to begin to warn the people of Beauregard last Thursday that there was a risk of a tornado in three days. On Sunday afternoon, sirens wailed and cellphones erupted with about 12 minutes of notice that a funnel cloud had dropped from a foreboding Alabama sky and was bound for Beauregard.

In forecasting, double-digit lead time is considered an extraordinary scientific feat, and officials said the warning was issued as soon as there was data available. But in a place with widespread poverty and few places to hide, the urgent forecast could not save everyone who did not have time to find safe shelter. Others simply disregarded the warning.

“Everything seemed to work O.K., and yet 23 people died,” said James Spann, a Birmingham television meteorologist who has guided generations of Alabamians through storms.

On Tuesday morning, the local authorities identified the 23 people who died in the tornado, the deadliest in the United States since 2013. The Lee County coroner, Bill Harris, said seven victims came from the same family.

In the small community of Beauregard, rescue workers combed the tree-laden wreckage and rubble and searched for up to eight people still believed missing. President Trump, who approved a federal disaster declaration for Lee County on Tuesday, is expected to visit the region on Friday to survey the damage.

As the storm touched down on Sunday, more than 80 people were packed into the basement of the Providence Baptist Church seeking shelter, sitting on the floor after all the chairs had been filled.

But the church’s pastor was not among them. The Rev. Rusty J. Sowell, known to seemingly everyone in this pocket of Alabama as “Brother Rusty,” was home with his wife when the sky turned dark. First came the hail, then the telltale piercing sound: a tornado.

Left with no time to take cover, Mr. Sowell and his wife hit the floor.

“There was a warning,” Mr. Sowell, 63, said on Tuesday. “Whether or not we adhered to the warning —” He paused. “We get complacent.”

Some years ago, after a hurricane left the region without electricity or an easy place to deliver aid, Providence built a second campus with a commercial kitchen, bathrooms with showers, and a generator. Until this week, it had never been used for its intended purpose.

Tornado forecasts are relatively frequent in parts of Alabama. And in much of the state, memories are still fresh of a single day in 2011, when 62 tornadoes tore across northern and central Alabama and caused about 250 deaths.

After the 2011 disaster, some local leaders in the state built large, simple community shelters.

But strong tornadoes are less common in Lee County, a largely rural region that is home to Auburn University.

Residents and local officials said a sense of complacency had set in over the years.

Days ahead of the tornado, local TV forecasters warned of potentially life-threatening conditions. Last Thursday, forecasters saw a combination of factors, including instability and changes in wind with altitude, that indicated potential trouble for Alabama.

The science of forecasting — using improved atmospheric models, better radar and clearer visuals — has advanced to the point where warnings can be remarkably precise. In his local tornado reports, Mr. Spann, the weather forecaster, has been known to cite specific barbecue restaurants that are near the path of a storm.

But in this case, even for those who wanted to escape danger, there were few places to go.

“Some of these tornadoes are so powerful, the only way you can assure that you’re going to survive is to go underground,” said Kathy Carson, the county’s director of emergency management. “And I think that’s what we faced in this community. So many people took precautions, and it didn’t matter.”

Mr. Spann said he worried generally that important forecasts often failed to reach enough low-income and Hispanic residents, who might not be watching or understanding TV or social media. These residents, he said, may also not own $30 weather radios that can give them further warning.

“Something just made me realize this one was real,” said Kia Burns, whose mobile home is standing but no longer livable. “My mom kept calling, and she was like, ‘I know you’re not scared, but this is real.’”

Ms. Burns, 21, who is due to give birth in two weeks, evacuated with her 1-year-old daughter, Londynn, to a relative’s sturdy brick house about five minutes before the tornado hit, she said.

Ethan Smith, 16, a high school sophomore who hopes to someday study meteorology, said he used the Snapchat app to warn friends to take the tornado threat seriously. One friend was going home from getting her nails done when Ethan told her to pull over because a second tornado was about to make landfall, Ethan said. His friend’s home, recently rebuilt after a fire, was again destroyed.

Attitudes in Lee County could shift in the aftermath of Sunday’s storm. Laura Myers, the director of the University of Alabama’s Center for Advanced Public Safety, said communities generally became more sensitive to disasters once they had experienced the trauma of one.

“There’s a high anxiety after an event like this,” she said, comparing the Beauregard tornado to the parts of the state that suffered the worst of the 2011 outbreak. “They’re still sensitive in those areas. There’s a lot of them that have P.T.S.D.”

Already, people in Beauregard say they will heed future warnings with more urgency — if they can.

David Dismukes, 56, saw the tornado from a distance on Sunday.

“If it had hit our house, we wouldn’t have had a chance,” he said.

Christina Caron and Julia Jacobs contributed reporting from New York.

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