Illinois residents begin to survey damage from tornadoes

As a powerful tornado bore down on their Illinois farmhouse, Curt Zehr's wife and adult son didn't have time to do anything but scramble down the stairs into their basement.

Uninjured, the pair looked out moments later to find the house gone and the sun out "right on top" of them, Zehr said. Their home, on the outskirts of Washington, Ill., was swept up and scattered over hundreds of yards by one of the dozens of tornadoes and intense thunderstorms that swept across the Midwest on Sunday, leaving at least eight people dead and unleashing powerful winds that flattened entire neighborhoods, flipped over cars and uprooted trees.

Early Monday, Washington Mayor Gary Manier said that 250 to 500 homes were damaged or destroyed in the storm and that it wasn't clear when residents would be allowed to return.

"Everybody's without power, but some people are without everything," he told reporters in the parking lot of a destroyed auto-parts store near a row of flattened homes.

"How people survived is beyond me," he said.

The powerful late-season wave of thunderstorms brought damaging winds and tornadoes to 12 states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York.

Illinois was the hardest struck, with at least six people killed and dozens more injured.

Communication remained difficult and many roads impassable, so it was not clear if the injury and death tolls would rise on Monday. Gov. Pat Quinn declared seven counties disaster areas.

“It’s important that we see ourselves as a family, that we come together when something difficult and dangerous and deadly happens,” Quinn said. “Our state government is going to respond with every asset we have to make sure these communities and the people in them are able to recover.”

Washington, a town of 16,000 about 140 miles southwest of Chicago, appeared to have suffered the most severe damage. The tornado cut a path about an eighth of a mile wide from one side of town to the other, state trooper Dustin Pierce said.

Across farm fields a little more than a mile from where Zehr's home was swept up, several blocks of homes were destroyed.

"The whole neighborhood's gone. The wall of my fireplace is all that is left of my house," said resident Michael Perdun, speaking by cellphone.

The Illinois National Guard assisted with search and recovery operations in Washington.

The White House issued a statement saying President Barack Obama had been briefed about the damage and was in touch with federal, state and local officials. Quinn and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence were scheduled to survey affected areas in their respective states Monday.

As law-enforcement officers continued to search for victims and sized up the cleanup and rebuilding job ahead, they kept everyone but residents and emergency workers out. With power off and lines down in many areas, natural gas lines leaking and trees and other debris blocking many streets, an overnight curfew kept all but emergency vehicles off pitch-black roads.

The only lights visible across most of Washington on Sunday night were red and blue flashes from police and fire-truck lights.

At OSF St. Francis Medical Center in nearby Peoria, spokeswoman Amy Paul said 37 storm victims had been treated, including eight with injuries ranging from broken bones to head injuries.

Another hospital, Methodist Medical Center in Peoria, treated more than a dozen people, but officials there said none of them were seriously injured. Brian Williamson, a state spokesman, said hospitals reported treating about 60 people in Washington but said that figure could grow.

The tornadoes on Sunday took many communities by surprise because they came late in the tornado season. But tornadoes in November aren’t unheard of. Weather experts say spring and fall are when the jet stream moves most, making conditions ripe for more severe weather.

In November of 2002 for example, 75 tornadoes from one storm front touched down across the United States, killing at least 36 people.

Still, deadly tornadoes in November are rare. From 1991 to 2010, people reported only about 50 tornadoes across the U.S. in November, compared with 276 on average in May.  

As extreme weather increases around the world, some are turning to climate change as an explanation. But while most scientists agree that hurricanes and other extreme weather are exacerbated by a warming earth, they say tornadoes are a little less predictable.

Harold Brooks, a scientist in the National Severe Storms Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Sunday's cluster of storms was a "once-out-of-seven-to-15-year event." Because tornado records were less reliable decades ago, it's hard to know whether events like Sunday's are increasing, he said.

Another problem for scientists is that the nature of tornadoes makes them hard to track accurately.

"In general, the record of tornadoes increases over time, but that's just because there are more and more people there to see them," said Kevin Trenberth, a climate analyst at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

But he said while it's a little early to say for sure that an increase in tornadoes is due to climate change, it's clear that some of the conditions that cause tornadoes are appearing with increased frequency throughout the year.

"With climate change, the warm moist air out of the Gulf is often warmer and moister," Trenberth said.  "There's no question that conditions are becoming more favorable (for tornadoes)."

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press. Peter Moskowitz contributed to this report.