At least 4 dead as tornado strikes St. Louis, mayor says

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, 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 people trapped in their homes.

“This is going to be a very exhausting and extensive search pattern,” Jenkerson said.

The National Weather Service in St. Louis said it confirmed a tornado on its radar Friday afternoon.

Large portions of the Midwest and the mid-Atlantic were at significant risk of severe weather 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.

Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri are expected to see major storms.

The risk Friday generally stretched from eastern Texas into the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. But the area of highest concerns were in Bloomington, Indiana; Evansville, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; 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 weather service office in St. Louis warned of hail of nearly 3 inches in diameter and damaging winds. Large hail was reported in Van Buren, Missouri, 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 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 mph.

Flash flood warnings were issued across several areas, including Philadelphia and Trenton, New Jersey, 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 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, a curtain of dust pushed into Chicago at about 6:30 p.m. and visibility dropped to a quarter-mile at Chicago Midway International Airport and near zero 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.

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.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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