At least six killed as violent storms, tornadoes slam central U.S.

CBS News and the Associated Press reported at least six people were killed Friday as a deadly outbreak of severe storms and multiple tornadoes ripped across the central United States, reducing homes to rubble, sending roofs into the air and leaving debris tangled in power lines. The violence of the system left communities in southern Michigan and western Oklahoma coping with fatalities, injuries and major damage, while forecasters warned the threat could continue to broaden east and south.

Branch County officials said three people died in the Union Lake area, about two hours outside Detroit, and at least 12 people were injured, with three taken to hospital as of Friday evening, according to a Branch County Sheriff’s Office statement relayed by CBS and AP. In western Oklahoma, authorities found a 47-year-old woman and her 13-year-old daughter dead in a vehicle near the intersection of a highway and a county road at about 10 p.m. Thursday; Sarah Stewart, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, said the crash "appears to be tornado related."

Video captured on Thursday from a camera mounted on a deputy’s car showed a giant funnel near Fairview, Oklahoma, with flashes of lightning illuminating what appeared to be a tornado touching the ground. CBS and AP described the footage as eerie, and reported downed trees and structural damage consistent with powerful rotating storms.

The outbreak spanned a large geographic swath and played out over multiple days. FOX Weather and its Forecast Center warned a severe outbreak was likely across parts of the Plains and Midwest beginning Friday afternoon, predicting "monster hail" and tornadoes for a broad corridor. FOX said the broader threat could target more than 63 million people over more than 1,500 miles from Texas to Michigan. The national Storm Prediction Center, cited by CBS and AP, identified more than 7 million Americans at the highest risk Friday in a zone that included Kansas City, Tulsa and Omaha, and nearly 25 million at a slightly lower but still significant risk in a band that included Dallas, Oklahoma City and Milwaukee.

Forecasters outlined two primary development windows: an afternoon round near the surface low over Kansas and the Missouri Valley, with major hail and tornado risk, followed by an overnight expansion as a cold front pushed east-southeast, bringing all severe hazards from Illinois southward through Oklahoma and into northeastern Texas. FOX Weather also noted that the late-week outbreak came on the heels of deadly storms in the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma on Thursday.

The scale of the event, measured by the population figures and the corridor of exposure, will test emergency responders, local emergency management and utilities, particularly where tornadoes have destroyed homes and where debris threatens power lines. Officials have so far released localized casualty and damage tallies, and storm surveys and full accounting of fatalities remain pending.

Federal and state weather agencies continue to monitor the evolving situation; the National Weather Service warned of severe, scattered thunderstorms across the Plains, the Ozarks and the Midwest. With tens of millions in harm’s way and multiple rounds of severe weather possible, communities across the central United States face a prolonged response and recovery period.