Residents of Iowa were surveying the damage on Wednesday morning after a wave of deadly storms swept across the state the night before, destroying much of one town and leaving the community bracing for a final death toll from at least one tornado and damaging winds.
Here’s what to know:
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Multiple people died and at least a dozen were injured by a tornado in the town, Greenfield, about 50 miles southwest of Des Moines, the Iowa State Patrol said. Search and rescue operations were continuing overnight.
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Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa issued an emergency disaster proclamation in 15 counties. In Adams County, one woman died from storm-related causes, according to the county’s medical examiner.
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At least 110,000 customers were without power in Iowa, Wisconsin and Indiana as of 5 a.m. local time, according to Poweroutage.us, which aggregates data from utilities across the country.
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The National Weather Service warned of “unsettled and changeable weather” from the West Coast to the Great Plains in the next few days. On Wednesday, a wide swath of the United States was at risk of severe weather, from Texas to New York State. Storms with large hail, damaging winds and potentially tornadoes were likely across parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.
The storm devastated Greenfield, a city of about 2,000 people, where video footage showed destroyed homes, mangled cars, and roads covered with debris after a reported tornado swept through the town in the afternoon. The Adair County Health System hospital in the city sustained tornado damage, and patients were transferred to other nearby hospitals, the Iowa Department of Public Safety said in a statement.
The city announced a curfew from 10 p.m. until 7 a.m. local time as it assessed the death toll and damage. “This tornado has devastated a good portion of this town and community,” Sgt. Alex Dinkla of the Iowa State Patrol said at a news conference Tuesday evening.
In Adams County, near Greenfield, television footage showed that three wind turbines had been toppled. One appeared to have caught fire, releasing a large plume of smoke.
A flood warning was in place for Butler and Black Hawk counties, northeast of Des Moines, for much of Wednesday.
The storms began on Tuesday morning with pea-sized hail, strong winds and heavy rains sweeping through Madison County, southwest of Des Moines. Multiple tornadoes were reported in southwest Iowa, as well as several north of Des Moines. At one point on Tuesday night, more than 13 million people in parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin were under tornado watches.
It was the latest bout of severe weather to strike the Midwest in recent weeks. Earlier storms have killed dozens of people across multiple states and injured many more. There have been more than 150 preliminary reports of tornadoes in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri so far this year. Most of those reports occurred before May and June, typically the peak period for tornadic weather in these states.