Multiple tornadoes touched down in several counties across Oklahoma on Saturday night, leaving a trail of destruction with multiple people injured and at least 1 person dead.
The region remains on high alert for severe weather after thunderstorms and tornados rolled through Friday and Saturday from Texas to the Great Lakes. About 106 tornadoes were detected in six states on Friday, with Nebraska and Iowa the hardest hit, officials said.
In Oklahoma, emergency officials confirmed that a tornado tracked through western Hughes County around 11 p.m. Saturday night, destroying or damaging several buildings in its wake.
Mike Dockrey, with Hughes County Emergency Management, confirmed to CBS News that at least four people were injured and one person died.
In neighboring Sulphur, a small town of about 5,000 people 80 miles south of Oklahoma City, at least two tornadoes were reported, while another hit Marietta and traveled directly over Interstate 35.
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Videos and photos emerging on social media early Sunday morning showed heavy damage across Sulphur, including scattered bricks, wooden beams and toppled trees. Buildings in the downtown area had blown-out windows and missing walls.
Red Cross Oklahoma said it was opening a shelter in Sulphur and was in contact with officials to help with the immediate needs of affected residents throughout the state.
Communities in Garfield, Grant, Kay, Payne and several other counties in Oklahoma also suffered damage to homes and other structures, officials said.
The National Weather Service in Norman said early Sunday that flash flooding was now the primary threat after the tornado warnings were lifted.
More than 39,000 people in Oklahoma and Texas were without power on Sunday morning.
In Kansas, the National Weather Service confirmed a “large and dangerous tornado” touched the ground near the town of Howard on Saturday afternoon.
The National Weather Service confirmed Saturday that multiple tornadoes touched down in at least three North Texas counties the day before, including three tornadoes in Navarro County. Two of them were EF1 tornadoes with wind speeds more than 100 miles per hour. The third EF0 tornado touched down north of Frost. Some homes there are leveled with trees and metal lining the area.
The Friday night tornadoes wreaked havoc in the Midwest, particularly in Nebraska and Iowa, causing a building to collapse with dozens of people inside and destroying and damaging hundreds of homes.
The sounds of chainsaws filled the air on Saturday in the Elkhorn neighborhood of Omaha, a city of 485,000 people with a metropolitan area population of about 1 million.
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“We watched it touch down about 200 yards over there,” Elkhorn resident Pat Woods told CBS News. “And then we went to get shelter and we came, but we could hear it going through. When we came back up, our fence was gone and we looked over to the northwest and the whole neighborhood is gone.”
The National Weather Service was still evaluating the number and strength of the twisters.
Nearly 47 million people are at risk for severe weather Sunday from east Texas northward into the upper Mississippi River Valley.