Midwest storms follow overnight tornadoes
LAWRENCE, Kan. – Severe storms swept through parts of Kansas and Missouri Sunday, carrying winds that knocked over airplanes at the downtown Kansas City airport and ripped roofs off homes, businesses and buildings at the University of Kansas.
The storms followed powerful tornadoes that ripped across southern Missouri and southern Illinois during the night, destroying homes along a path of more than 20 miles and killing a married couple whose car was blown off the road, officials said.
A twister, which roared up to one-half mile wide, killed a woman seeking shelter in her mobile home and displaced about 150 residents in western Missouri on Sunday night, officials said. Six people were injured and two were missing after the tornado cut a path more than 16 miles wide through the town of Sedalia, said Rusty Kahrs, Pettis County presiding commissioner.
In Kansas, emergency management officials declared northeastern Douglas County a disaster area after the storm hit Lawrence and the surrounding area about 8 a.m.
The University of Kansas campus was littered with trees, roof tiles and window glass after several buildings were damaged, authorities said.
At Kansas City International Airport, the storm lifted a cargo container off the airfield and blew it into several vehicles, authorities said. At the Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport, some private airplanes tied down on the airfield were “spun around,” spokesman Joe McBride said.
During the night, several people were injured as the storm system pounded the central Mississippi Valley with hailstones as big as softballs, high wind and torrential rain.
It was not immediately clear how many tornadoes struck the area straddling the Mississippi River from Missouri into Illinois. The twisters were part of a long line of stormy weather that stretched from the southern Plains up the Ohio Valley.
The worst damage was along a rural stretch of Highway 61 near St. Mary in Perry County, Mo., about 80 miles south of St. Louis, emergency management director Jack Lakenan said.
A twister caught a pickup truck on the highway and hurled it beneath a roadside propane tank, killing the husband and wife in the vehicle, Lakenan said. The wreckage of the pickup was wedged beneath the tank.
The Missouri Highway Patrol said the tornado near St. Mary had wind of 113 mph to 206 mph. Heavy rain prompted flash flood warnings in southern Missouri.
Across the Mississippi River in Illinois, a tornado damaged several homes and businesses in the small town of Fults and injured one person, said meteorologist Ron Przybylinski. One person was injured by flying glass in Bremen, Ill., authorities said.