Tornado, flood watches for mid-US after 9 injured by twisters

John Newland in NBC News: Severe thunderstorms packing high winds, heavy rains, large hail and possibly tornadoes threatened much of Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma on Friday, a day after tornadoes in the two states injured nine people.

Tornado watches were in effect Friday morning across much of Arkansas, extending into southern Missouri and eastern Oklahoma, according to the National Weather Service. Strong storms with potential to produce large hail were simultaneously forming to the north, in northeastern Kansas and northwestern Missouri, the weather service said.

A slight risk of severe thunderstorms extended from northern Texas to the Great Lakes in a 300,000-square-mile swath home to 42 million people and major cities including Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee and Indianapolis, the service said.

On Thursday, two tornadoes were confirmed in Oklahoma and a third struck in Arkansas, with it and accompanying storms injuring nine people, according to weather.com, which said two people were injured in Rogers, Ark., from a lightning strike.

Because the storms mostly struck after dark, damage had not been fully assessed. Many more severe storms were reported, however. The weather service logged 16 reports of tornadoes in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Illinois and said a house was reported to have been destroyed, injuring two people, in Oden, Ark. Three people were reported injured in Pike County, Ark., where a mobile home was destroyed and at least three houses were damaged....

Category F5 tornado (upgraded from initial estimate of F4) viewed from the southeast as it approached Elie, Manitoba on Friday, June 22nd, 2007. Shot by Justin Hobson (Justin1569 at en.wikipedia), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license