At least four people were killed in southeastern Missouri when a tornado It struck the area before dawn on Wednesday, officials said. Mark Winkler, director of the Cape Girardeau County Office of Emergency Management, told CBS News the deaths occurred in Bollinger County, about 50 miles south of St. Louis.
The sergeant said the tornado moved through the rural area between 3:30 and 4 a.m. Clark Parrott of the Missouri Highway Patrol. “The damage is widespread. It’s sad to see,” he said.
Parrott said a search and rescue operation involving several agencies was underway. Crews have to use chainsaws to cut down trees and brush to get to the homes.
Highway Patrol deployed rifles Aerial photo From the destruction that resulted in uprooting trees and houses that turned into rubble.
The tornado remained on the ground for about 15 minutes, and traveled an estimated 15 to 20 miles, said Justin Gibbs, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Paducah, Kentucky.
A team from the Meteorological Service headed to Bollinger County to gather details about the tornado, but Gibbs said it was clear “it was a big one. It was a big tornado.”
Bollinger County General Manager Larry Welker said the tornado traveled along Route 34 into the village of Glen Allen of just over 100 people, and that he was unable to directly examine the damage because law enforcement was restricting access to the area. .
“I’m getting reports that it was really bad,” he said.
“There were several trailers there, and I knew there were still people missing,” Welker said.
Storms moving through the Midwest and South on Wednesday threaten some areas still reeling from a Killer match Bad weather last weekend. The Storm Prediction Center said up to 40 million people in an area that includes Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit and Memphis, Tennessee, are at risk from storms later on Wednesday. Late in the morning, the biggest threat appeared to be an area stretching from lower Michigan to Tennessee and Kentucky.
Severe storms that began last Friday and continued through the weekend caused deadly tornadoes in 11 states as the system pushed into Arkansas to the south, midwest and northeast.
CBS affiliate KFVS-TV reported that schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, canceled classes on Wednesday because storms were expected to move in the area during the morning primetime.
At least two tornadoes were confirmed Tuesday in Illinois as storms targeted the state, eastern Iowa and southwestern Wisconsin before dark.
The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings for Iowa and Illinois on Tuesday night and said a confirmed tornado was spotted southwest of Chicago near Bryant, Illinois. Officials said another tornado touched down Tuesday morning in the Colonna area of western Illinois. Local news reports showed wind damage to some businesses there.
Courtesy of Carol Anderson and Chad Swagger/via Reuters
Earlier Tuesday, powerful thunderstorms lashed the Quad-Cities area of Iowa and Illinois, with winds up to 90 mph and hail the size of a baseball. No injuries were reported, but trees were snapped and some businesses were damaged in Moline, Illinois.
Northern Illinois, from Moline to Chicago, saw winds of 75 to 80 mph and gusts of 2 to 3 inches Tuesday afternoon, said Scott Baker, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. The agency received reports of a simtrux being toppled by winds in Lee County, about 95 miles west of Chicago.
The same conditions that fueled those storms — an area of low pressure with strong southerly winds — are setting up severe weather from Tuesday through early Wednesday, said Ryan Bunker, a meteorologist with the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma.
These conditions, which typically include dry air from the West rising over the Rocky Mountains and colliding with warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, are what make the United States more vulnerable to hurricanes and other intense storms.
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