An 11-month-old baby was found alive in a field after being sucked up by a tornado and thrown the length of a football field.

The boy’s mother did not survive the storm, which was one of a number of tornados and thunderstorms that have killed at least 55 people and injured 150 others in the South, the highest such death toll in a decade.

The National Storm Prediction Centre in Norman, Oklahoma, said as many as 69 tornados raged this week across Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama and Indiana, many doing their worst damage as voters went to the polls on Super Tuesday.

The man who found the baby at first thought that he was a doll. “As soon as I saw his little butt cheeks move I hollered, ‘It’s not a baby doll. It’s alive!’ ” said David Harmon, a fire fighter with the Wilson County Emergency Management Agency in Tennessee.

The tornado had shredded through several homes just off Highway 25 in the Castalian Springs area of Sumner County. John Poss, a paramedic, examined the child for injuries. “I touched every part of that baby, thinking he was hurt,” Mr Poss said. “He was a blessed young man.” It is thought that the baby was thrown 100 metres or more. He was later taken to the Monroe Carell Jr Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, Nashville, where he was treated for minor facial bruising and declared a miracle.

The baby has been identified as Kyson, the son of Kerri Stowell, 23, who was killed by the storm and was found near a local post office. Ms Stowell’s father, Doug, said: “It’s a miracle they ain’t both gone. We’ve had some divine intervention.”

Phil Bredesen, the Governor of Tennessee, said that he was shocked by the intensity and scope of a storm that “just literally sat on the ground”, covering an area 400 miles (650km) wide.

Local TV stations have been broadcasting dozens of remarkable survival stories. Barry Newberry, a town constable in Lafayette, Tennessee, said: “It will take 15 years to clean everything up. But the people here will never be the same.” He had arrived to help neighbours along a road where every house had been destroyed. “Everybody was running around like they were drunk. They were just dazed and devastated.”

President Bush will travel to Tennessee today to survey the storm damage and offer support. Many homes are still without electricity and in Hartsville, Tennessee, a natural gas facility caught fire. The death toll of this week’s storms rivals that of a series of tornados in 1999 when about 50 people were killed.

Tornados typically kill about 70 people in the US every year.

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