Millions from the Midwest to the southern Plains were under some form of tornado warning on Wednesday after multiple apparent twisters caused extensive damage in Illinois and Indiana.
Northern Illinois remains the highest risk, with a "moderate" tornado warning for 2 million people in cities south and east of Chicago, including Joliet, Peoria and Bloomington. A marginal risk extends all the way down to Texas and Tennessee.
A tornado emergency was declared in Knox, Indiana, on Tuesday, with the National Weather Service telling residents, "This is a life-threatening situation. Seek shelter now!"
On Tuesday, the parent thunderstorm that produced tornadoes in northern Illinois and northern Indiana persisted for over 7 hours, along a 200-mile path. According to the National Weather Service, there were eight reports of tornadoes between the two states on Tuesday, and two in Texas.
An elderly couple from Lake Village, Indiana, was killed in one of the tornadoes on Tuesday night, officials said on Wednesday. Several others were hospitalized from the storms, officials added.
Many areas were also hit by strong storms and heavy rain, with strong winds and hail the size of golf balls in the Chicago region. Flood warnings are in place along rivers in Illinois and Indiana.
Much of Indiana, northern Kentucky and western Ohio — including in Indianapolis, Evansville, Louisville and Cincinnati — are under a tornado watch until 12 p.m. ET. Approximately 67 million people are under the threat of severe storms from northern Pennsylvania down to the Gulf Coast.
More than 12,000 energy customers were without power across the Midwest and 23,000 across the Great Lakes region on Wednesday morning, according to PowerOutage.us.
NBC Chicago reported that there was significant, but so far unquantified, damage across northern Illinois and northwest Indiana, including to homes, other buildings, and roads.
Bob Wehrle, 60, told NBC News that he received an alert on his phone Tuesday night and, once he started seeing debris flying through the air from the storm, he took shelter in a basement utility room at his home in Kankakee, Illinois.
"Next thing I know, my kitchen is falling in on me," Wehrle said. "The house is falling in, and I’m looking at the sky."
Wehrle said he was not hurt in the storm, but it took his neighbors and family members about an hour to dig him out of the devastation. His wife, Margaret, was not home at the time of the storm because she was working at the hospital.
"The worst was there was a mini fridge in our house that ended up kinda on top of me, on my legs, and I couldn’t get it open to get water out of it," he added, noting that he didn't have to go to the hospital.
Kankakee County, south of Chicago, declared a state of emergency and said local officials and sheriff's deputies were carrying out search and rescue efforts, as well as damage assessments. There have been no confirmed reports of deaths so far.
A house in the village of Aroma Park had its roof partially blown off and its walls collapsed, NBC Chicago reported. The local school district is shut Wednesday.
The resident, who gave his name as Bob, told NBC Chicago that the storm "started getting louder and I started hearing stuff breaking and caving in and pretty soon my kitchen fell on top of me from upstairs."
"Everything caved in, the fridge and everything. Luckily, I was in, like, a hole, so I didn't get hurt at all — I was just trapped," he said. Neighbors came to rescue him.
Rob Churchill, the chief of the Lake Township Fire Department, said in a video posted to Facebook that multiple homes in Lake Village, Indiana, were destroyed when the town took a "direct hit" from a tornado. People forced from their homes were being sheltered in a local school. "It's going to be a long night," he added.
In the same video, while standing in front of what appeared to be a destroyed home, Newton County Sheriff Shannon Cothran said, "Please do not come here. Do not try to help right now."
Separately, Cothran told reporters that "injuries so far have been reported as being minor, but the home damage is pretty significant."
The midweek threat of storms and tornadoes makes this the most "widespread and impactful severe weather outbreak so far this year," according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Courtney Travis.
"The overlap of strong winds aloft, abundant moisture from the Gulf and sharp temperature contrasts creates an environment supportive of tornadoes, damaging wind gusts and large hail," he said.
The weather service told people in the Chicago area to reduce their water usage ahead of the storm to prevent flooding and protect the limited local water supply.
Parts of the Northeast also experienced extreme weather this week. On Tuesday, New York City's Central Park broke its daily high temperature record, with the temperature soaring to 80 degrees, melting away remaining snow and ice from a recent blizzard.
