A reported tornado struck St. Louis on Friday afternoon, leaving behind uprooted trees and downed power lines.
The tornado was part of a widespread threat of severe weather across several states, capable of unleashing large hail, damaging winds and tornadoes, possibly some strong ones.
Large portions of the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic were at significant risk of severe weather on Friday, as a multiday storm system moved slowly east. A bull’s-eye centered over parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky was at risk for some of the most severe weather.
Here are the key things to know:
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Images on social media showed numerous trees down in St. Louis. It was not immediately clear if there were any injuries. Large hail was reported in Van Buren, Mo., about 150 miles south of St. Louis.
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More than 100,000 customers were without power in Missouri, according to Poweroutage.us, which tracks outages.
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By early afternoon, an area of the East Coast including southern New Jersey, Central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and Delaware had been under a rolling series of flash flood and tornado warnings.
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Across parts of the middle Mississippi Valley and the Ohio Valley, the potential for severe weather will be greatest in the evening, with the storms expected to persist overnight.
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On Thursday, at least 11 tornadoes spun up across the Upper Midwest, including one that was reported in Mayville, Wis., that damaged businesses and homes, the authorities said.
“It’s a fairly broad area for severe potential, and it looks like all hazards could be possible,” Mr. Gleason said.
Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri are expected to see major storms.
The risk on Friday generally stretched from eastern Texas into the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. But the area of highest concerns include Bloomington, Ind.; Evansville, Ind.; Louisville, Ky.; and St. Louis.
Those areas are at particular risk of supercells, highly organized, longer-lasting storms that produce stronger winds and larger hail — in the case of Friday, bigger than baseballs — than typical thunderstorms.
“The same storms that produce very large hail are also the ones that we tend to be most concerned about from a tornado perspective,” Mr. Gleason said.
The National Weather Service office in St. Louis warned of hail of nearly three inches in diameter and damaging winds.
On Friday, St. Louis was under a tornado warning until just after 3 p.m. local time. (Warnings are issued after a tornado is spotted on a radar or a trained spotter sees a tornado, while watches mean the conditions to form a tornado are in place.)
“Parts of Kentucky particularly and southern Ohio will have the potential for multiple rounds of thunderstorms and each producing heavy rain,” said Richard Bann, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center.
The threat of thunderstorms comes to the Midwest in a week marked by unseasonably warm weather. The heat is expected to continue on Friday, with many locations across the region forecast to record afternoon highs in the 80s and 90s. Lower temperatures are predicted to arrive this weekend as cooler, drier air sweeps in from the northwest.
The Northeast had a taste of severe weather early in the day.
On Friday afternoon, thunderstorms moved through southern New Jersey, northern Delaware, northern Maryland and southeastern Pennsylvania.
The area was under a severe thunderstorm watch, with the storms capable of delivering hail as big as limes and winds up to 70 miles per hour.
Flash-flood warnings were issued across several areas, including Philadelphia and Trenton, N.J., and a few tornado warnings were in effect in southern New Jersey.
More than 300,000 are still without power after Thursday’s storms.
The threat of thunderstorms comes after similar weather tore across the Upper Midwest on Thursday.
More than 300,000 customers across several states were without power on Friday afternoon after a powerful system ripped through Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us.
Severe weather in Chicago on Thursday night delayed a Beyoncé show at Soldier Field for hours as the city was briefly under a tornado watch.
Eleven tornadoes were reported, mostly in Minnesota and Wisconsin, but one also touched down in Illinois and another in Michigan, according to the Storm Prediction Center.
The number could increase as local Weather Service offices continue to investigate reports of tornadoes.
Aimee Ortiz contributed reporting.
Amy Graff is a Times reporter covering weather, wildfires and earthquakes.
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