BEAUREGARD, Ala. (AP) — Picking through the twisted debris that had been her Alabama mobile home, Carol Dean found her wedding dress and a Father's Day note to her husband reading, "Daddy, I love you to pieces." But the storm took the 53-year-old husband and father.

Dean was on the clock Sunday afternoon at Walmart while her husband was home in Beauregard. As forecasters warned stormy weather was heading toward the Alabama-Georgia line, she said, David Wayne Dean sent a text message cautioning a friend to keep up with the weather on the news.

Then the storm hit and David Dean didn't make it out. His body was found on the other side of an embankment in the neighbor's yard.

"Our son found him," Dean said between sobs Monday. "He was done and gone before we got to him. My life is gone. He was the reason I lived, the reason that I got up."

The tornado that struck the area where the Deans lived packed winds estimated at 170 mph (274 kph) and chewed a path of destruction nearly a mile (1.6 kilometer) wide. Mobile homes tucked among tall pine trees were swept from their bases and smashed into unrecognizable piles of rubble. Toys, clothes, insulation, water heaters and pieces of metal were scattered across the hillsides where once towering pines were snapped in half.