OKLAHOMA CITY—Bad weather moved into the Ohio River Valley on Tuesday after a series of powerful storms hit the Plains, including tornadoes that destroyed homes and left two people dead in Oklahoma.
National Weather Service meteorologist Rick Smith said Tuesday’s risk was not as great as it was Monday, when about two dozen tornadoes were reported across six states. But communities along the Ohio River saw strong storms, and tornadoes were reported in southern Illinois and western Kentucky.
Kentucky State Police said in a statement that at least 10 people were hurt and an unknown number of homes and businesses were damaged when a tornado tracked across Graves County in the western part of the state Tuesday afternoon.
The statement said the tornado traveled into the city of Mayfield, causing “significant” damage to homes and businesses. Those hurt had injuries that were not life-threatening, according to the statement.
State Police were also responding Tuesday evening to another apparent tornado near the Trigg and Christian County line. Some structural damage to barns was reported.
The National Weather Service said at least one tornado also touched down in southern Illinois’ Pope County, but there were no reports of injuries or damage.
A separate system was poised to move through north Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area, while another storm system should bring storms to the area from north Texas to near St. Louis on Wednesday.
In southern Oklahoma, crews were assessing damage from a tornado a day earlier blamed for two deaths that sliced through two counties at speeds of between 135 mph and 165.
“There’s a home where basically there’s no walls left,” Smith, the meteorologist, said. “Everything that used to be the home is just a pile of rubble, so there’s no roof, there’s no walls — there’s just kind of the foundation where the home used to be.”
Oklahoma emergency officials said two 76-year-old men were found dead after Monday’s storms, one near Wynnewood and another about 35 miles away near Connerville. The medical examiner’s office said it was conducting autopsies to determine how the men died.
Smith said the damage measured in Garvin and Murray counties was consistent with at least an EF3 tornado, a category of tornadoes that are capable of stripping the outer walls from even well-made homes. That storm, caught on video by several storm chasers, appeared white against the dark clouds of a supercell storm.
The Storm Prediction Center said it received about two dozen reports of tornadoes on Monday from parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois.
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