Intense thunderstorms and tornadoes swept across the U.S. Midwest on Sunday, causing extensive damage in several central Illinois communities, killing at least two people.
Mark Styninger, the coroner of Washington County in southern Illinois, said an elderly man and his sister were killed around noon when a tornado hit their home in the rural community of New Minden.
The community of Washington in central Illinois appeared particularly hard-hit, with one resident saying his neighbourhood was wiped out in a matter of seconds.
"I stepped outside and I heard it coming. My daughter was already in the basement, so I ran downstairs and grabbed her, crouched in the laundry room and all of a sudden I could see daylight up the stairway and my house was gone," said Michael Perdun in an interview Sunday afternoon with The Associated Press on his cellphone.
"The whole neighbourhood's gone, the wall of my fireplace is all that is left of my house."
A Washington alderman told Chicago's WBBM Radio that there were "quite a few people hurt" but didn't offer details. The damage, he said, was extensive.
"I went over there immediately after the tornado, walking through the neighbourhoods, and I couldn't even tell what street I was on," said Alderman Tyler Gee. "Just completely flattened — some of the neighbourhoods here in town, hundreds of homes."
Images on television showed extensive damage, with structures reduced to rubble and cars turned upside-down.
"There is a lot of debris," Sara Sparkman, a spokeswoman for the health department of Tazewell County, Ill., where Washington is located, told The Weather Channel. "We do know that shelters are being set up in some of the communities because people are being displaced out of their homes because of the storms that hit."
In a news release, the Illinois National Guard said it had dispatched 10 firefighters and three vehicles to Washington to assist with "immediate search and recovery operations in the tornado damaged area."
Steve Brewer, chief operating officer at Methodist Medical Center of Illinois in Peoria, said four or five people had come to the hospital seeking treatment, but he described their injuries as minor. He said another area hospital had received about 15 patients, but did not know the severity of their injuries.
Brewer said doctors and other medical professionals were setting up a temporary emergency care centre to treat the wounded before transporting them to area hospitals.
Wind, thunderstorms, hail
The weather service said tornadoes had touched down in Washington, Metamora, Morton and other central communities, though officials could not say whether it was one tornado touching down or several.
It came out of a fast-moving storm system that was headed toward Chicago and threatened a large swath of the Midwest with dangerous winds, thunderstorms and hail.
About 90 minutes after the tornado destroyed homes in Washington, the storm darkened downtown Chicago. As the rain and high winds slammed into the area, officials at Soldier Field evacuated the stands and ordered the Bears and Baltimore Ravens off the field. Fans were allowed back to their seats shortly after 2 p.m.
And in McHenry County, northwest of Chicago, funnel clouds were spotted late Sunday morning, dropping out of the clouds and then retreating again, said Bob Ellsworth, the assistant director of the county's emergency management agency. Ellsworth added that none had touched the ground or caused any damage.
Around the same time, the weather service issued a tornado warning for parts of Kenosha, Racine and Walworth counties in Wisconsin.
'Get ready now'
"We obviously have a very dangerous situation on our hands and it's just getting started," Laura Furgione, deputy director of the National Weather Service, told reporters in a conference call.
Fans are warned to take cover as a severe storm moves through Soldier Field during the first half of an NFL football game between the Chicago Bears and Baltimore Ravens, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013, in Chicago. (Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press)
"Our primary message is this is a dangerous weather system that has the potential to be extremely deadly and destructive ... Get ready now."
The weather service advised the tornado outside Peoria, Ill., would affect mainly rural areas, with mobile homes likely to be destroyed and trees likely to be uprooted or snapped.
Tornado warnings were in effect for parts of Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri. Weather officials urged residents of areas with tornado warnings in place to take cover in interior, low-floor rooms of sturdy buildings.
The NWS's Storm Prediction Center said the storm was moving dangerously fast, tracking eastward at 97 kilometres per hour, meaning that just looking out at the storm will not be enough to let people know when to take cover.
"These storms will be moving very fast ... They will be at your location and on to the next location in a matter of minutes. As a result, people cannot wait for visual confirmation of the threat," said Russell Schneider of the Storm Prediction Center.
"This is a very dangerous situation ... Approximately 53 million [people] in 10 states are at significant risk for thunderstorms and tornadoes."
'Things can change very quickly'
The potential severity of the storm this late in the season also carries the risk of surprise.
"People can fall into complacency because they don't see severe weather and tornadoes, but we do stress that they should keep a vigilant eye on the weather and have a means to hear a tornado warning because things can change very quickly," said Matt Friedlein, a weather service meteorologist.
According to agency officials, parts of Illinois, Indiana, southern Michigan and western Ohio are at the greatest risk of seeing tornadoes, large hail and damaging winds throughout the day Sunday.
Strong winds and atmospheric instability were expected to sweep across the central Plains during the day before pushing into the mid-Atlantic states and northeast by evening. Many of the storms were expected to become supercells, with the potential to produce tornadoes, large hail and destructive winds.
Friedlein said such strong storms are rare this late in the year because there usually isn't enough heat from the sun to sustain the thunderstorms. But he said temperatures Sunday are expected to reach around 15 to 20 C, which is warm enough to help produce severe weather when it coupled with winds, which are typically stronger this time of year than in the summer.
"You don't need temperatures in the 80s and 90s [around 30 C] to produce severe weather [because] the strong winds compensate for the lack of heating," he said. "That sets the stage for what we call wind shear, which may produce tornadoes."
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