“Our priority is life and saving lives and keeping people safe tonight,” Spencer added. She urged St. Louis residents to stay off the roads Friday night and stay off their phones if they can, due to “limited cell phone access.”
A curfew was put into place from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. in two police districts due to the damage, and authorities are working to declare a state of emergency in the city, she added. The damage will “require a massive cleanup effort.”
Some of the tornado sirens did not go off, which will be investigated, said Sarah Russell, commissioner of the city’s emergency management agency. The focus now is on life-saving measures in the community, she added.
The National Weather Service had warned of an “extremely dangerous tornado” tracking through part of St. Louis.
The deaths follow an incredibly dangerous day of severe thunderstorms, including the potential for long-lasting, powerful tornadoes and hurricane-strength wind gusts in the eastern half of the United States. The storms have left hundreds of thousands of customers without power, particularly in Missouri, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana.
It’s all part of a multi-day threat of widespread severe weather that will stretch into early next week.
Here’s the latest:
- Severe weather outbreak expected: Nearly 9 million people from Missouri to Kentucky are under a level 4-of-5 risk of severe thunderstorms Friday with extensive wind damage, large hail and tornadoes possible. “Several strong tornadoes are expected and a long-track, high-end tornado will be possible,” the Storm Prediction Center warned.
- Extensive wind damage possible: Friday’s storms will form in an “exceptionally volatile environment,” the National Weather Service in Paducah, Kentucky, warned. These storms will have a high threshold for damage and could produce widespread damaging wind gusts stronger than 75 mph starting in the early evening.
- Tornadoes and wind cause widespread damage: Thursday’s powerful storms left nearly 400,000 homes and businesses in the dark across multiple Midwest states Friday evening as communities deal with the aftermath. Wisconsin’s Dodge County was hit particularly hard. Significant damage was reported in the county and at least one person was taken to the hospital with injuries.
Powerful storms are roaring to life
The atmosphere is supercharging a new round of severe thunderstorms after stormy weather that stretched from Arkansas to Kentucky Friday morning cleared out of the area.
Those morning storms shifted east into parts of the Appalachians in the early afternoon, leaving the door open for explosive thunderstorm development across the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys.
“A regional outbreak of severe thunderstorms is likely this afternoon into tonight,” the SPC warned Friday, adding some people in the path of storms will see “intense supercells.”
More than 70 million people in the eastern half of the US are under at least a level 2-of-5 threat of severe thunderstorms on Friday, but the greatest risk of long-lasting, EF3-plus tornadoes and widespread damaging winds is centered on parts of the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys.