BEAUREGARD, Ala. — As search-and-rescue workers raced on Monday to help the rural Alabama communities that had been ravaged by tornadoes, officials said that at least three children were among the 23 people killed by the storms.

Houses lay shredded and entire neighborhoods flattened in the wake of Sunday’s storms in Lee County, Ala., where the deaths occurred. Sheriff Jay Jones of Lee County said it was as if someone “took a giant knife and just scraped the ground.”

Sheriff Jones said that several people were still unaccounted for, and that crews were sorting through the debris in hopes of finding survivors.

Bill Harris, the Lee County coroner, said the three children among the dead were a 6-year-old, a 9-year-old who died at the hospital and a 10-year-old. He said he had been told that in at least one case multiple members of the same family had died.

Here are the latest developments:

• Sheriff Jones said on Monday afternoon that the death toll remained at 23, with no new victims found since Sunday. . Several people — a number in the double digits — were still unaccounted for, he said, without giving the exact figure.

• Dozens of people were sent to hospitals on Sunday with injuries, with at least two in intensive care.

• The National Weather Service said Monday that it believed the tornado that raced through Lee County had been an EF-4 storm, with winds of 170 miles an hour.

• Chris Darden, the meteorologist-in-charge for the weather service’s Birmingham office, said the track of the “monster tornado” appeared to have been at least 24 miles long, and that the storm had been nearly a mile wide.

• Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama said she had spoken with President Trump and received assurances of federal support.

A 10-year-old girl is among the victims

Taylor Thornton, 10, had been camping with her best friend for several days and was at the friend’s father’s mobile home in Beauregard when the storm hit on Sunday.

Taylor’s mother, Ashley Thornton, said in a telephone interview that she got a call around 2 p.m. Sunday from the friend’s mother, who is divorced from the father. The mother had had no luck reaching the father by phone; could Ms. Thornton try?

When she couldn’t get through either, her husband, David Thornton, drove toward the home, and then got out and walked when snapped trees blocked the way. When he arrived, “there was no house left,” he told his wife by phone; he recognized the place only by a motorcycle parked outside.

Ms. Thornton said her husband persuaded a sheriff’s deputy to let him onto the property, where he saw Taylor’s body. The deputy let him carry her to a waiting vehicle.

“The few times I’ve talked to him, all he’s told me was that she looked like she was sleeping,” Ms. Thornton said. When the identity of the body was confirmed, she said, family and friends “just kind of crumbled.”

As of Monday afternoon, Ms. Thornton said, she had not been told exactly how Taylor died, other than that “the tornado had gone through and destroyed everything.”

Ms. Thornton said her daughter was a smiling, well-behaved girl who loved horses and God and spending time with her best friend. “Just the sweetest, kindest little thing in the whole world,” she said.

The friend was injured in the storm but survived, Ms. Thornton said; the friend’s father and one of his friends were killed.

Mr. Thornton, she said, “is still trying to process this — he’s having a hard time right now.”

The search for survivors continues

Sheriff Jones said on Monday afternoon that search-and-rescue teams were not yet finished sweeping the hardest-hit area, a square mile of land in Beauregard, an unincorporated community of 8,000 to 10,000 people south of Opelika.

More than 100 people had joined the search, supported by drones with infrared sensors that can detect heat signatures of trapped survivors. Most of the residences in the area are mobile or manufactured homes, and dozens had been destroyed. Some debris appeared to have been thrown more than a half-mile by the winds, the sheriff said.

Kathrine Carson, the emergency management director for Lee County, said the tornado was “the worst natural disaster that has ever occurred in Lee County.”

Mr. Darden, the meteorologist, said that the tornado was the deadliest in the United States since 2013, when a tornado in Moore, Okla., killed 24 people.

Mr. Harris, the Lee County coroner, said it would be necessary to fingerprint six of the victims in Alabama to identify them.

“It’s been a long, long night,” Mr. Harris said. “These families, some of them have lost just about the entire family.”

Apart from the EF-4 storm in Lee County, the Weather Service also assessed two other tornado tracks to the south in Macon County and Barbour County, Ala., and rated the tornadoes that touched down there as EF-1 storms, with wind speeds of at least 86 miles an hour.

A family huddled together to ride out the storm

As the tornado pulverized the small brick house in Opelika in which three generations of Evony Lashawn Wilson’s family cowered together in a bathroom, Ms. Wilson’s 15-year-old son looked at her and said, “Mom, I don’t want to die.”

Ms. Wilson said that her son, Qumran, had long feared the weather, growing up in the shadow of the tornadoes that killed more than 230 people across Alabama in 2011. Now, his nightmares were coming true.

The tornado stripped away their roof. The bathroom walls collapsed around Ms. Wilson, 44, her son, husband and her 72-year-old mother. The wind crushed them against one another. When Ms. Wilson looked up, she saw trees and debris swirling overhead.

Her husband urged their son to hang on. Ms. Wilson pushed Qumran’s head down and told him to keep praying.

“Just the sound — it was something you never forget,” Ms. Wilson said in a telephone interview on Monday morning. “You could hear everything coming apart.”

When the tornado passed, Ms. Wilson’s son and husband managed to wriggle out of the debris and went to look for help through their neighborhood of trailer homes and one-story houses that had been all but reduced to pulp. Ms. Wilson stayed behind with her mother, who has severe health problems and cannot walk far.

As they huddled in the wreckage of the bathroom, now exposed to the elements, Ms. Wilson’s phone buzzed with another tornado alert. She lay across her mother on the floor and tried to shelter both of them with a fallen bathroom cabinet as another wave of wind roared over them.

Ms. Wilson’s mother fractured her hip in the storm, and Ms. Wilson fractured her ankle. The brick house, which had belonged to Ms. Wilson’s mother, was destroyed, and so was the mobile home next door, where Ms. Wilson and her family lived.

There were more tornado deaths on Sunday than in all of 2018

There has been a relative lull in deadly tornadoes in the United States lately, especially in 2018, when only nine deadly tornadoes were reported, causing 10 deaths. A more typical year might see 15 to 20 deadly tornadoes, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration statistics.

Contrast that with 2011, the most ferocious year for tornadoes in decades, when 59 deadly storms claimed 553 lives. Nearly all struck in a three-month period from late February to late May, including one tornado in Missouri that left 158 people dead. Science writers for The New York Times answered questions about why that season had been so brutal, and other facts and fictions about tornadoes.

After the 2011 outbreak, which killed more than 230 people in Alabama alone, some communities ordered upgrades to storm shelters, and residents became extraordinarily sensitive about even the threat of poor weather.

Tornadoes can strike nearly anywhere in the country when conditions are right, but they are most common in the southern Plains and the South, especially in a broad area called Dixie Alley stretching from Kansas and Oklahoma to Georgia.

Sunday’s weather was a “fairly classic” pattern for March, where colder air mixes with warmer air, said James Spann, the chief meteorologist for WBMA television, the local ABC affiliate.

“This is clearly the biggest loss of life we’ve had in my state in a while,” he said. “In fact, we had more deaths in Lee County, Ala., today than the entire United States last year.”

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An outpouring of help as a church prepares for evacuees

Scores of volunteers converged on Providence Baptist Church in Opelika on Monday and began sorting supplies, which were soon stacked high on folding tables.

There were piles of clothes and pyramids of blankets. Beneath one table, a cardboard box held Ziploc bags of essentials: toilet paper, toothpaste, soap and the like. Cases of bottled water lined one wall.

“This is how things work in a small community: When help is needed, everyone gets together and gets it done,” said Scarlett Baker, who was serving as the de facto mayor of the relief operation at Providence.

By midmorning, her wish list was becoming clearer: Children’s Motrin and Tylenol, so those with mild fevers could avoid crowded hospitals. Baby wipes. Ointments.

The church was preparing for a possible influx of evacuees after sundown on Monday. During the day, volunteers said, they expected that many people were out trying to salvage what remained of their homes.

Here’s how you can help

If you’re outside the affected area, sending money to established charities is the best way to help. The American Red Cross can be reached by phone at (334) 749-9981 or online. The Alabama Governor’s Relief Fund is also accepting donations.

The Red Cross is also a good place to start if you’re in the area hit by the tornadoes. The organization is leading the effort to help people find family members, and is working with Providence Baptist Church to establish a shelter.

The Church of the Highlands, with locations across the state, is assembling groups of volunteers.

Alan Blinder reported from Beauregard, Ala., and Matt Stevens from New York. Reporting was contributed by Adeel Hassan, Julia Jacbos, Mihir Zaveri and Emily S. Rueb from New York, and Jack Healy from Denver.

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