Tornadoes Sweep Parts Of Midwest As Expected, Illinois Not As Hard Hit

Massive tornado yesterday in Jonesboro, Arkansas

As expected, tornadoes swept through parts of the Midwest Saturday, but luckily there have no reports of deaths so far, and only relatively minor injuries. There is a lot of damage, though.

Illinois had been expected to be the epicenter of the tornado outbreak and they did have tornadoes in that state.

But tornadoes were more heavily concentrated to the west in Iowa, and the most destructive of the tornadoes hit to the south, in Jonesboro, Arkansas and the neighboring town of Brookland.  

Dramatic videos of the tornado is at the bottom of this post.

In Jonesboro, a rapidly developing tornado quickly became strong and destroyed a shopping center and numerous homes, Local television station KAIT in Jonesboro reported only six injuries from the twister, which is amazing considering the destruction it caused.

The mayor of Jonesboro put everybody in town under curfew last night, ordering them to stay in their homes so that emergency workers could look for more people that needed help.  They also needed to clear streets of a huge amount of debris and fallen power lines.

Lots of people have seen this photo of a Jonesboro doctor behind
glass so he can protect his one year old from coronavirus. On
Saturday, the family's home was destroyed by a tornado.

Maybe the saddest result of the tornado involves a Dr. Jared Burks and his family. He's been on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak.

A photo taken by his wife Alyssa went viral recently. It showed the doctor watching, behind glass,  his one-year old son.  They must stay separate in case the doctor contracts the virus.  

The Jonesboro tornado destroyed the Burks family home Saturday while the doctor was in it. He wasn't hurt and his family was elsewhere, but the whole thing is just too cruel.  A GoFundMe page is set up for the Burks family. As of early this morning, people donated more than $25,000 to the family.

A total of at least 17 tornadoes have been so far confirmed across the Midwest Saturday.  Several homes and other buildings suffered extensive damage in Iowa and western Illinois.

Today, some severe thunderstorms are possible today in western New York and Pennsylvania, and in the Southeast Monday and Tuesday.

Up here in Vermont, we'll just get a couple rainy days today and Monday.  If any flooding occurs here, it will be very spotty and minor.

Some videos:

Videographer Mike Lane took this dramatic video of the tornado.

 

Zachary Hall too this video of the tornado destroying the Mall at Turtle Creek in Jonesboro:



Here's what scary live coverage of the tornado looked like on KAIT-TV in Jonesboro. The amount of debris in the air at 1:40 to 1:50 into the video is incredible: