Residents dig out from tornado damage after storms kill 27 in Kentucky, Missouri and Virginia

Associated Press

18-05-2025

LONDON, Ky. (AP) — Residents in Kentucky and Missouri sifted through damage in tornado-stricken neighborhoods and cleared debris Sunday after severe storms swept through parts of the Midwest and South and killed more than two dozen people.
Kentucky was hardest hit as a devastating tornado damaged hundreds of homes, tossed vehicles and left many homeless. At least 18 people were killed, most of them in southeastern Laurel County. Ten more people were critically injured with state leaders saying the death toll could still rise.
'We are hard at work this morning addressing the tragic damage and deaths caused by severe weather,' Gov. Andy Beshear posted on X Sunday morning. 'We are securing emergency housing options and looking into sites for intermediate housing.'
The latest Kentucky storms were part of a weather system Friday that killed seven in Missouri and two in northern Virginia, authorities said. The system also spawned tornadoes in Wisconsin, brought punishing heat to Texas and temporarily enveloped parts of Illinois — including Chicago — in a pall of dust on an otherwise sunny day.
In London, Kentucky, Ryan VanNorstran huddled with his brother's large dogs in a first-floor closet as the storm hit his brother's home Friday in a neighborhood along Keavy Road where much of the destruction in the community of nearly 8,000 people was centered. VanNorstran was house-sitting.
He said he felt the house shake as he got in the closet. Then a door from another house crashed through a window. All the windows blew out of the house and his car was destroyed. Chunks of wood had punched through several parts of the roof but the house avoided catastrophic damage. When he stepped outside he heard 'a lot of screaming.'
'I guess in the moment, I kind of realized there was nothing I could do. I'd never really felt that kind of power from just nature,' he said. 'And so I was in there and I was just kind of thinking, it's either gonna take me or it's all gonna be all right.'
Survey teams were expected on the ground in Kentucky on Monday so the state can apply for federal disaster assistant, Beshear said.
Parts of two dozen state roads were closed, and some could take days to reopen, he said.
About 1,200 tornadoes strike the U.S. annually, and they have been reported in all 50 states over the years. Researchers found in 2018 that deadly tornadoes were happening less frequently in the traditional 'Tornado Alley' of Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas and more frequently in parts of the more densely populated and tree-filled mid-South.
In St. Louis, Mayor Cara Spencer said five people died, 38 were injured and more than 5,000 homes were affected.
'The devastation is truly heartbreaking,' she said at a news conference Saturday.
A tornado struck in Scott County, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of St. Louis, killing two people, injuring several others and destroying multiple homes, Sheriff Derick Wheetley wrote on social media.
The storms hit after the Trump administration massively cut staffing of National Weather Service offices, with outside experts worrying about how it would affect warnings in disasters such as tornadoes.
The office in Jackson, Kentucky, which was responsible for the area around London, Kentucky, had a March 2025 vacancy rate of 25%; the Louisville, Kentucky, weather service staff was down 29%; and the St. Louis office was down 16%, according to calculations by weather service employees obtained by The Associated Press. The Louisville office was also without a permanent boss, the meteorologist in charge, as of March, according to the staffing data.
Experts said any vacancy rate above 20% is a critical problem.
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See more photos from the severe storms in the South and Midwest here.
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Contributing were Associated Press writers Sophia Tareen in Chicago, Jennifer Peltz in New York, Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta, Mike Catalini in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, Juan Lozano in Houston, and Seth Borenstein in Kensington, Maryland.