“Violent tornado” pounds Missouri capital

What the National Weather Service calls a “violent tornado” hit Jefferson City, Missouri, late Wednesday night, leaving extensive damage and downed power lines.  All available first responders were being called to the city, Missouri’s state capital.

Police said they had several reports of injuries and multiple reports of people trapped in homes.

Jefferson City’s fire department said simply, “Pray for our citizens.”

The weather service said a “confirmed large and destructive tornado” was seen over Jefferson City at 11:43 p.m. Wednesday, moving northeast at 40 mph. The city, with a population of about 40,000, is 30 miles west of St. Louis.

“More dangerous severe weather – tornadoes and flash flooding -expected overnight,” according to a tweet from the Missouri Department of Public Safety.

The weather service said it had received 22 reports of tornadoes by late Wednesday evening, although some of those could be duplicate reporting of the same twisters.

CBS Jefferson City affiliate KRCG-TV obtained images of the large funnel:

Three people were killed as a suspected twister hit the Golden City area of Barton County, in southwest Missouri Wednesday night. That’s not far from Joplin, where a catastrophic tornado leveled much of the city and killed 161 people exactly eight years ago.

In eastern Oklahoma, two barges broke loose and floated swiftly down the swollen Arkansas River Wednesday, spreading alarm downstream as they threatened to hit a dam.

The Jefferson City tornado hit during a week that has seen several days of tornadoes and torrential rains in parts of the Southern Plains and Midwest. CBS News confirmed four deaths related to those earlier storms.

Authorities urged residents of several small towns in Oklahoma and Kansas to leave their homes as rivers and streams rose.

Officials in the Arkansas River town of Webbers Falls, Oklahoma ordered a mandatory evacuation Wednesday afternoon because of the river’s rising level.

But Wednesday evening, a posting on the town’s official Facebook page sounded the alarm about the runaway barges for its 600 residents: “Evacuate Webbers Falls immediately. The barges are loose and has the potential to hit the lock and dam 16. If the dam breaks, it will be catastrophic!! Leave now!!”

There was no word by midnight Wednesday where the barges were on the river, but local television stations showing live video of the river and the lock and dam said they had not yet arrived. There was speculation they were stuck upstream.

For the third consecutive day, dangerous storms prompted numerous tornado warnings and reports of twisters touching down, most in Missouri and Oklahoma.