A powerful storm system that produced multiple reports of tornadoes struck the Midwest early Wednesday, killing at least 13 people in Illinois and Missouri.
A spokeswoman for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency said the coroner’s office in the small town of Harrisburg, Ill., has reported that 10 people are dead as a result of the storms. The apparent twister hit the area around 5 a.m., causing widespread damage.
In Missouri, three people were killed — one in a trailer park in the town of Buffalo, Fox News has learned. At least three people were critically injured in the small eastern Kansas town of Harveyville.
The tornadoes were spawned by a powerful storm system that blew down from the Rockies on Tuesday and was headed across the Ohio and Tennessee river valleys toward the Mid-Atlantic region.
Corey Mead, lead forecaster at the U.S. Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said a broad cold front was slamming into warm, humid air over much of the eastern half of the nation.
From Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, at least 16 tornado sightings were reported from Nebraska and Kansas across southern Missouri to Illinois and Kentucky, according to the storm center, an arm of the National Weather Service.
Tornado season normally starts in March, but it isn’t unusual to see severe storms earlier in the year. Forecasters can seldom assess how serious a season will be because twisters are so unpredictable. This year, two people were killed by separate tornadoes in Alabama in January, and preliminary reports have showed 95 tornadoes struck that month.
In neighboring Kansas, the National Weather Service reported brief tornado touchdowns southwest of Hutchinson, and Gov. Sam Brownback declared a state of emergency after an apparent tornado struck Harveyville.
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
