"The storm prediction center is forecasting a five percent chance of severe weather in the central Florida area tomorrow. I think we could see isolated thunderstorms in the area," said NASA shuttle launch weather officer, Kathy Winters.

"This is the same funnel boundary as has spawned the tornadoes," she added, but she said the weather system is expected to lose steam in the area.

Lift-off, originally scheduled for December, now is set for Thursday after a two-month delay, while engineers got to the bottom of electrical faults with fuel gauges on the shuttle's external fuel tank.

Dozens of tornadoes sliced across southern US states ripping apart homes and shopping malls, killing at least 48 people and injuring hundreds more, officials said Wednesday.

Twenty-four people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, and seven in Kentucky, officials in the three states said.

Tornado watches were still in effect as of 1500 GMT in parts of Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and the western Florida panhandle, the National Weather Service said.

Atlantis mission managers will decide whether to go ahead with the launch on Thursday after they hold a meeting at 4:45 am (0945 GMT) to discuss "issues and constraints to tanking," including the weather, NASA officials said.

Aside from the weather, there were no technical issues that looked likely to delay takeoff of the Atlantis shuttle mission to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS).

Atlantis was originally scheduled for blastoff on December 6, but malfunctioning circuits in the fuel gauges of the spacecraft's liquid hydrogen tank forced several postponements.

NASA has paid close attention to technical problems on its space shuttles since a thermal tile broke off when Columbia took off in 2003, and hit a wing.

The damage caused the shuttle to break up on re-entry, killing all seven crew members and temporarily grounding shuttle missions.

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