Powerful storms that rolled through the Midwest spun up multiple tornadoes, including a fierce twister that smashed through a small Iowa town Tuesday, carving a bleak landscape of destroyed homes and businesses, shredded trees, smashed cars and widely strewn debris and causing an unknown number of injuries. The storms also pummeled much of Nebraska with torrential rain, high winds and large hail.
Iowa State Patrol spokesman Sgt. Alex Dinkla said multiple people were injured in Greenfield, a town of about 2,000 around 55 miles southwest of Des Moines, and there was a lot of damage in town. He didn’t know the extent of the injuries.
In the aftermath of the storm, parts of Greenfield appeared devastated. Mounds of broken wood, branches, car parts and other debris littered lots where homes once stood. Cars lay busted and bent while damaged houses sat skewed against the gray and overcast sky. Trees stood — barely — bereft of branches or leaves. Residents helped each other salvage furniture and other belongings from mounds of debris or from homes barely left standing.
The Adair County Health System hospital in Greenfield was damaged in the storm, but Mercy One spokesman Todd Mizener said he had no further details. The hospital is affiliated with Mercy One, and officials were on their way to Greenfield to assess the damage.
Multiple tornadoes were reported throughout the state, and one also apparently took down several 250-foot wind turbines. CBS affiliate KCCI-TV in Des Moines, Iowa, showed at least three wind turbines that were toppled by an apparent tornado in southwest Iowa, and at least one was in flames with black smoke pluming from the bent structure.
CBS News obtained dramatic video captured by a tornado chaser in Adams County, Iowa, which showed a home being destroyed by a tornado, with debris swirling.
Ben McHone / LSM
As of Tuesday night, more than 41,000 homes and businesses in Iowa were without power, according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us.
In far southwestern Iowa, video posted to social media showed a tornado just northwest of Red Oak. Further east and north, the National Weather Service issued multiple tornado warnings for areas near the towns of Griswold, Corning, Fontanelle and Guthrie Center, among others.
Iowa was already braced for severe weather after the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center gave most of the state a high chance of seeing severe thunderstorms with the potential for strong tornadoes. Des Moines public schools ended classes two hours early and canceled all evening activities ahead of the storms.
Earlier in the day, residents to the west in Omaha, Nebraska, awoke to weather sirens blaring and widespread power outages as torrential rain, high winds and large hail pummeled the area.
More than 10,000 customers lost power in and around Omaha early Tuesday, and the deluge of more than 5 inches of rain in less than two hours in some areas saw basements flooded and cars submerged in low-lying areas. That downpour, combined with rain earlier in the nighttime hours, brought the total to 8 inches in the region, according to the National Weather Service.
Television station KETV showed video of several vehicles overtaken by rushing water on a low-lying street in north-central Omaha and firefighters arriving to rescue people inside.
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While officials had not confirmed tornadoes in the area, there were confirmed reports of hurricane-force winds, said weather service meteorologist Becky Kern.
“We have a 90 mph gust measured at Columbus,” Kern said. Columbus is about 87 miles west of Omaha.
Chris Bruin, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel, said the storms were likely to intensify as the night went on and produce “more destructive tornadoes.”
Tornado watches were also in place south to Missouri and Arkansas, but Bruin forecasted that Iowa would likely see the “bulk of the worst conditions.”
Parts of Illinois and Minnesota were also under threat of severe weather, with conditions also expected to worsen Tuesday night. The Chicago metropolitan area could see wind gusts up to 75 mph, with possible tornado activity, according to CBS Chicago meteorologists David Yeomans and Albert Ramon.
A dust storm near Bloomington in central Illinois forced Illinois State Police to shut down portions of Interstate 55 and Interstate 74 earlier Tuesday, CBS Chicago reported. Anyone caught in the storm was advised to pull over and turn off their lights.
The weather service also issued tornado warnings for portions of southern Minnesota. CBS Minnesota meteorologist Joseph Dames forecasted that Eastern Minnesota — including the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area.
The storms follow days of extreme weather that have ravaged much of the middle section of the country. Strong winds, large hail and tornadoes swept parts of Oklahoma and Kansas late Sunday, damaging homes and injuring two in Oklahoma.
Another round of storms Monday night raked Colorado and western Nebraska and saw the city of Yuma, Colorado, blanketed in hail the size of baseballs and golf balls, turning streets into rivers of water and ice. Residents cleaned up Tuesday using heavy construction equipment and snow shovels to clear ice that had piled up knee-deep.
The storm in Yuma shattered vehicle windshields, pounded the siding off buildings and broke many windows. lt also brought heavy rain to the city of about 3,500 people about 40 miles west of Nebraska, stranding some cars in the streets. The hail was still about a half-foot deep on Tuesday morning and front-end loaders were used to move it, said Curtis Glenn, a trustee at Yuma Methodist Church, which had flooding and hail damage.
Glenn, an insurance claims adjuster, said the combined sounds of the hail, rain and wind sounded like “a gun going off while you’re on a train.”
“It’s not something you ever want to see or ever want to see again,” he said of the storm, the worst he has seen in his years working in the insurance industry.
Last week, deadly storms hit the Houston area in Texas, killing at least seven. Those storms Thursday knocked out power to hundreds of thousands for days, leaving those Texans in the dark and without air conditioning during hot and humid weather. Hurricane-force winds reduced businesses and other structures to debris and shattered glass in downtown skyscrapers.