Three Die After Tornadoes Plow Through Southeast : Weather: Portions of Georgia and Florida are hardest hit. Winter arrives in parts of the Northeast, Midwest and South.

Thunderstorms pelted parts of the Southeast on Saturday, spawning tornadoes that killed three people in Georgia, while wintry conditions chilled parts of the Northeast, Midwest and South.

A mother and two sons were killed when a tornado struck their home in a mobile home park in southern Georgia, authorities said. Twelve other people were injured and 15 homes were reported destroyed.

“The storms basically moved eastward across the state,� said Walt Valeski, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Atlanta. “Some produced high winds, others isolated tornadoes.�

Tornadoes also raked parts of north-central Florida, destroying homes, toppling power lines and killing two horses when a barn collapsed. Authorities reported minor injuries to seven people. The Florida tornadoes touched down near Cross City, Archer, Newberry and Gainesville.

Heavy rain from thunderstorms caused flooding near Inglis and Yankeetown in Florida. Coastal roads in Citrus County and Hernando County were under water.

Beach roads were closed with as much as two feet of water in Pasco County, and water came over the seawalls in Pinellas, Manatee and Lee counties, officials said.

Showers and thunderstorms on Saturday afternoon reached over the eastern Gulf of Mexico states, and rain extended across the Atlantic coastal states, the Appalachians and the eastern part of the Tennessee Valley.

Snow fell in the Ohio Valley, much of the Tennessee Valley, the Great Lakes, the central two-thirds of the Mississippi Valley and eastern parts of the central Plains.

Four inches of snow at Evansville, Ind., was the city’s heaviest 24-hour snowfall during October, while Abilene and San Antonio had the earliest snowfall on record in those Texas cities.

Snow squalls have produced a foot of snow since early Friday at Burley, Wis., according to the weather service.

Freezing temperatures were forecast for parts of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Mississippi. And low temperature records for the date were tied or broken from Wyoming to Texas.

The low temperature for the nation Saturday morning was 18 degrees below zero at Laramie, Wyo. It was the coldest ever in Laramie during October--the previous record was 15 below, set on Oct. 13, 1969.