HENRYVILLE, Ind — A string of violent storms scratched away small towns in Indiana and cut off rural communities in Kentucky as an early-season tornado outbreak killed more than 30 people, and the death toll rose as daylight broke on Saturday’s search for survivors.

Massive thunderstorms threw off dozens of tornadoes as they raced Friday from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes.

Twisters that crushed entire blocks of homes knocked out cellphones and landlines alike, ripped power lines from broken poles and tossed cars, school buses and tractor-trailers onto roadways made impassable by debris.

Weather that put millions of people at risk Friday killed 31, but both the scale of the devastation and the breadth of the storms made an immediate assessment of the havoc’s full extent all but impossible.

In Kentucky, the National Guard and state police headed out to search wreckage for an unknown number of missing.

In Indiana, authorities searched dark county roads connecting rural communities that officials said “are completely gone.”

For those still in Henryville, a town of about 2,000 just north of Louisville, Ky., that meant walking down littered streets with shopping carts full of water and food, handing it out to anyone in need.

Hundreds of firefighters and police zipped around a town where few recognizable structures remained; all of Henryville’s schools were destroyed.