A tornado damaged buildings and power outages in communities along the Missouri-Illinois border, and damage was reported in other parts of the states due to severe weather.
Sunday night’s tornado passed through St. Mary, Missouri, about 55 miles (88 kilometers) southeast of St. Louis, before crossing the Mississippi River into Chester, Illinois, the National Weather Service reported. There were no reports of serious injuries.
A large system of fall storms developed over the central United States on Sunday and strengthened as it passed through the St. Louis region, St. Louis-based weather service expert Jared Maples told The Associated Press on Monday. Charles, Missouri. The storms caused heavy rain, causing some flooding around tributaries and in low-lying areas, and spawning several suspicious tornadoes in eastern Missouri and southwestern Illinois.
“There are structures around the Farmington and Fredericktown area of Missouri that have been affected,” Maples said. “Chester, Illinois, is another area that was hit hard.”
The weather service sent inspection teams to confirm whether those areas were affected by tornadoes, he said.
It was likely a tornado that swept across the north side of Chester, a city of about 8,700 across the Mississippi River from St. Mary, knocking down trees and power lines and damaging homes, according to Larry Willis, a Randolph County spokesman in the LA Emergency Management Agency. Willis said he had preliminary reports of a tree falling on a home and damage to the roof of a nursing home.
Willis said the nearby village of Bremen “took a direct hit” before the storm dissipated about a mile (1.6 kilometers) east of that community. In its wake, a large storage building in Bremen was destroyed and Illinois Route 150 was closed due to downed power lines and poles.
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