TORNADOES STRIKE MIDWEST AGAIN

By C. J. Refsland on May 20, 2013 • ( 1 )

(USA Today) The National Weather Service placed parts of five storm-battered states — Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas — under a tornado watch Monday afternoon, meaning that conditions were favorable for tornadoes to develop within the next few hours.

The weather service said it was tracking “a large and extremely dangerous tornado” just west of Moore, Okla., which is south of Oklahoma City. The storm was moving to the northeast, and forecasters said they expected “large, destructive hail up to tennis ball size.”

The five-state area is in the heart of a storm system hovering over the Plains and Midwest all the way to Minnesota.

On Sunday, a tornado packing winds as high as 200 mph, left two people dead in Oklahoma. Tornadoes and high winds injured more than 20 in the region.

The body of 79-year-old Glen Irish was found in an open area of the neighborhood after a twister slammed into Shawnee, Okla., leveling a mobile home park.

The Oklahoma medical examiner on Monday confirmed the second fatality, Billy Hutchinson, 76.

Both victims were from Shawnee, but it was not immediately clear if both lived in the Steelman Mobile Home Park, which was destroyed.

“You can see where there’s absolutely nothing, then there are places where you have mobile home frames on top of each other, debris piled up,” Pottawatomie County Sheriff Mike Booth said after surviving damage. “It looks like there’s been heavy equipment in there on a demolition tour.

“It’s pretty bad. It’s pretty much wiped out,” Booth said.

More than 60 million Americans are at risk of severe storms Monday, with the primary targets including Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas, the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center warned.

“Damaging wind gusts, large hail and tornadoes are possible in all areas,” Weather Channel meteorologist Kevin Roth said.