Tornadoes struck cities in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas on Saturday night as storms ripped through the Southern Plains, killing at least two people, destroying homes, overturning trucks and leaving more than 300,000 homes without power.
The severe weather was moving eastward Sunday morning. More than 19 million people were in areas of “enhanced” risk for severe weather, and more than 1 million were under tornado watches early Sunday in parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee.
At least two people were killed and many injured when a tornado struck North Texas on Saturday, Cook County Sheriff Ray Sappington said. County officials reported the force of the storm flipped a semi-trailer and a camper and damaged a marina in Denton County.
Emergency crews were working to rescue people who were trapped and searching others' homes, authorities said. The exact number of injured was not yet known, the county said. A Shell truck stop in Cook County was also heavily damaged, leaving people trapped inside even after the storm had passed.
“We estimate the damage to be significant,” Police Chief Justin Stamps of Valley View, a city north of Dallas, said in an email, adding that the town was in the early stages of rescue efforts.
In Oklahoma, a tornado downed trees and power lines, making some roads impassable and causing power outages, Rogers County officials said on social media. Power remained out in the city of Claremore, about 30 miles northeast of Tulsa, and city police said it expected the outages to continue for an “extended period of time.” “Significant damage has been caused by tonight's storms,” ​​police said.
In Arkansas, a tornado caused a gas leak, downed trees and power lines and knocked out power to much of the city of Rogers, where officers were working to treat people trapped inside, local police said.
“Several businesses and residences have sustained structural damage,” Rogers Police Department spokesman Keith Foster said in an email. At least three businesses sustained significant damage, and the local gas company was fielding a “high volume” of calls about gas leaks, he said.
The Benton County Sheriff's Office, which includes Rogers and Decatur, said on social media that emergency services lines were “inundated” with calls and that crews were working to clear blocked roads.
More than 320,000 customers were without power in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas early Sunday, according to PowerOutage.us, a website that tracks utility information across the U.S.
The tornado threat had subsided in Texas by Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service in Fort Worth, Texas.
Still, many parts of the Great Plains are bracing for more severe weather, with large hail, damaging winds and even powerful tornadoes possible on Sunday in parts of Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.
The United States has been hit by an onslaught of destructive storms over the past week, with at least several tornadoes reported every day.
In Iowa on Tuesday, a storm packing powerful tornadoes with winds of at least 185 mph engulfed southwestern Iowa, killing five people and destroying parts of a city.