Tornadoes, Storms Tear Across Midwest

Tornadoes and heavy thunderstorms ripped across the nation’s midsection Saturday, uprooting trees and damaging buildings, and lightning injured six players on a baseball team in Minnesota.

The tornado spree began Friday, when more than two dozen twisters plowed into rural Kansas and Nebraska. At least seven persons were injured.

The Seward County Sheriff’s Department and the Nebraska State Patrol sealed off Utica in eastern Nebraska Saturday to assess damages after a twister hit Friday night, sheriff’s dispatcher Jeanne Policky said.

Dan McCright, Seward County’s chief deputy, said the tornado moved northeast through Utica’s business district, damaging most or all of the buildings.

Bricks were taken off the second story corner of the bank, windows were blown out of the hardware store, a building collapsed on several antique cars and a storage building was destroyed at the grain elevator, he said.

McCright said the tornado destroyed three homes also. He said there were countless downed power lines, utility poles and uprooted trees.

“Luckily, only four or five people were injured, none of them seriously,� he said.

Elsewhere Friday, tornadoes ripped through other parts of central and eastern Nebraska, damaging homes and farm buildings, uprooting trees, downing power lines and injuring several persons.

“Things have died down somewhat during the nighttime hours, but it looks like there’s going to be another round of severe weather today,� Scott Tansey, a spokesman for the National Severe Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City, said Saturday.

Tornadoes and funnel clouds were reported in Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa and Texas Saturday.

Twisters uprooted trees and tore the roof off a barn east of Montezuma, Iowa, while golf ball-size hail and 60-m.p.h. winds raked the area.

Team Injured

Also Saturday, lightning struck a tree near Lake Nokomis in Bloomington, Minn., outside Minneapolis, injuring six members of a baseball team who had sought shelter during a storm.

One player was in critical condition and five others were listed in satisfactory to serious condition, a hospital spokesman said.

The first twisters hit at mid-afternoon Friday, spinning out of thunderstorms that spewed heavy rain and hail as big as golf balls, the National Weather Service reported.

“It looked like about half of the total number occurred in Kansas and the rest were about equally spread out between Nebraska and North Dakota,� Tansey said.

Some damage was reported, but no injuries, from twisters that hit Minnesota and North Dakota, the weather service said.

At least 16 twisters ripped into a six-county area of northwestern Kansas Friday, said Tom Kelsey of the National Weather Service in Goodland, Kan.

“It was one of the more important outbreaks I’ve seen in my more than 20 years of weather service work,� Kelsey said.

“When we checked with law enforcement officials, particularly in Rooks and Phillips counties, they always had one going on, sometimes two,� he said.

In hard-hit Rooks County, Sheriff Frank Skovold said that deputies trailed twisters as they moved through the county and “wiped out� at least a half-dozen farms.

“Large trees, three and four feet in diameter, were literally snapped off in front of us and thrown across the roadway, blocking our path, and electric lines came down over them,� Skovold said, adding that officers found one farm “completely obliterated� by a twister.