At least four people were killed after a tornado, struck St. Louis on Friday afternoon and left a trail of destruction of uprooted trees, downed power lines and collapsed buildings, the authorities said.
The tornado was part of widespread severe weather across several states moving through the Midwest, unleashing large hail, damaging winds and tornadoes, including some strong ones.
“We have all hands on deck,” said Cara Spencer, the city’s mayor, in a Friday evening news conference. “Our priority here, right now, today, tonight, for the next 24 hours is life.”
The storm initially hit the city around 3 p.m. local time and damaged an area of about 20 square blocks, said Dennis Jenkerson, the St. Louis fire commissioner.
The city has urged residents to stay off the roads and away from damaged areas while emergency crews sweep through neighborhoods responding to distress calls and for people trapped in their homes.
“This is going to be a very exhausting and extensive search pattern,” Commissioner Jenkerson said.
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:
-
Images on social media showed numerous trees down in St. Louis.
-
The tornado also damaged buildings in St. Louis as seen in images and videos shared online. Ripped brick facades, mangled chairs and a badly damaged building with water spraying out of it were among the scenes in the city.
-
More than 100,000 customers were without power in Missouri, according to Poweroutage.us, which tracks outages.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
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 were in Bloomington, Ind.; Evansville, Ind.; Louisville, Ky.; and St. Louis.
Those areas were 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 National Weather Service office in St. Louis warned of hail of nearly three inches in diameter and damaging winds. Large hail was reported in Van Buren, Mo., about 150 miles south of St. Louis.
“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 was 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.
On Friday afternoon and evening, a dust storm just south of Chicago created near zero visibility conditions on highways.
Weather Service forecasters in Chicago issued a dust storm warning for portions of northwest Indiana and north-central Illinois, including the Kankakee River Valley.
This is only the third time the office has ever issued a dust storm warning.
“This is not common at all,” said Zachary Wack, a meteorologist with the Weather Service in Chicago.
Mr. Wack said webcams along sections of Interstates 55 and 57 showed zero visibility. The dust storm was kicked up by powerful winds generated by thunderstorms that raced across central Illinois.
Aimee Ortiz and Simon J. Levien contributed reporting.
Amy Graff is a Times reporter covering weather, wildfires and earthquakes.
The post At Least 4 Dead as Tornado Strikes St. Louis, Mayor Says appeared first on New York Times.
