The National Weather Service said some tornadoes were spotted in southwestern Michigan, including one that blitzed parts of Portage. Photos posted on Facebook showed severe roof damage at a FedEx building and debris resting on delivery vehicles. It wasn’t immediately known if there were injuries.
A tornado watch was issued on Tuesday afternoon for parts of northeast Indiana, southern Michigan and northwest Ohio with the possibility of tornadoes, large hail and wind gusts of up to 112km/h.
Tuesday’s storms were not expected to pose as intense a threat as those on Monday, said Roger Edwards, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Centre.
The Storm Prediction Centre cited 17 reports of tornadoes from Monday evening to early Tuesday in the central part of the United States. Eight of the twisters were in Oklahoma, two each in Kansas, South Dakota and Iowa, and one each in Nebraska, Missouri and Tennessee. The powerful storms come amid a wild swing in severe weather across the globe that includes some of the worst flooding in Brazil and a brutal Asian heatwave.
A deadly tornado that touched down on Monday night in Oklahoma ripped through the 1000-person town of Barnsdall, about a 40-minute drive north of Tulsa. The National Weather Service there had warned on Monday evening that “a large and life-threatening tornado” was headed towards Barnsdall, with wind gusts up to 112km/h. It was the second tornado to hit the town in five weeks — a twister on April 1 with maximum wind speeds of 145-161km/h damaged homes and blew down trees and power poles.
Debris and damage from powerful storms that hit Barnsdall, Oklahoma. Photo / AP
At least 30 to 40 homes in the Barnsdall area were damaged on Monday night, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported, and a nursing home said it had evacuated residents because a gas leak could not be turned off due to storm damage.
One person died in the town and one man was missing, Barnsdall Mayor Johnny Kelley said.
“There are several homes destroyed, completely levelled,” he said. “The toughest thing on me as the mayor is this is a small community. I know 75-80 per cent of the people in this town.”
First responders rescued about 25 people, including children, from heavily damaged homes where buildings had collapsed on or around them, Kelley said. About half a dozen people suffered injuries, including a firefighter who was taken to a hospital with chest pains, he said.
Authorities launched a secondary search on Tuesday morning to find a man who was still missing, Kelley said.
The Barnsdall Nursing Home posted online that all residents were accounted for with no injuries. They were being taken to other facilities. It asked families to bear with it “as it is chaos in town ... Please pray for us”.
Aerial videos from Barnsdall showed several well-built homes reduced to piles of rubble and others with roofs torn off and damaged walls still standing. The powerful twister tossed vehicles, downed power lines and stripped limbs and bark from trees across the town. A 64ha wax manufacturing facility in the community had also suffered heavy damage, Kelley said.
Kevin Stitt, who toured the damage, said the tornado was rated by weather researchers as an EF4, which is described as a violent tornado with wind speeds up to 320km/h. Stitt said he and legislative leaders had agreed to set aside US$45 million ($75m) in this year’s budget to help storm-damaged communities.
“Oklahomans are resilient, and we’re going to rebuild,” Stitt said.
Damage also was reported in Bartlesville about 32km northeast.
At the Hampton Inn in Bartlesville, several splintered 2x4s were driven into the south side of the building. Chunks of insulation, twisted metal and other debris were scattered over the hotel’s lawn, and vehicles in the parking lot were heavily damaged with smashed-out windows.
Matthew Macedo, 30, who was staying at the hotel, said he rushed with his co-worker to the hotel lobby after hearing the tornado sirens and was then ushered into the hotel laundry room to wait out the storm.
“We lost power ... that’s kind of the first indicator that things were real,” he said. “When the impact occurred, it was incredibly sudden.”
The weather soured on Monday, bringing gusty winds and rain. But after dark, tornadoes were spotted skirting northern Oklahoma. At one point in the evening, a storm in the small town of Covington had “produced tornadoes off and on for over an hour”, the National Weather Service said. Throughout the area, wind farm turbines spun rapidly in the wind and blinding rain.
A car lies knocked over on its side after a tornado tore through Sulphur, Oklahoma, in April. Photo / AP
The storms tore through Oklahoma as areas such as Sulphur and Holdenville were still recovering from a tornado that killed four and left thousands without power last month. Both the Plains and Midwest have been hammered by tornadoes this spring.
Oklahoma and Kansas had been under a high-risk weather warning. The last time such a warning was issued was on March 31 last year, when a massive storm system tore through parts of the south and Midwest including Arkansas, Illinois and rural Indiana.
The entire week is looking stormy across the US. The eastern US and the south are expected to get the brunt of the bad weather through the rest of the week, including in Indianapolis, Memphis, Nashville, St Louis and Cincinnati, cities where more than 21 million people live. It should be clear over the weekend.
