A car is upturned in a Kroger parking lot after severe storm swept through Little Rock, Ark., on Friday.
Andrew DeMillo/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Andrew DeMillo/AP
A car is upturned in a Kroger parking lot after severe storm swept through Little Rock, Ark., on Friday.
Andrew DeMillo/AP
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A tornado plowed through Little Rock and surrounding areas on Friday afternoon, reducing rooftops to splinters, toppling vehicles and tossing debris on roadways as people raced for shelter.
More than 350,000 people were at risk as what the National Weather Service called a “confirmed large and destructive tornado” tore through business districts and neighborhoods in Little Rock and North Little Rock.
Passengers and airport employees at Clinton National Airport in Little Rock took shelter in bathrooms and were ordered to stay there until 3:45 p.m. Aerial footage showed several rooftops were torn from homes in Little Rock and nearby Benton.
There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Nearly 70,000 customers in Arkansas were out of power on Friday afternoon, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages; about 37,000 were without power in neighboring Oklahoma.
Massive storms brewing over at least 15 states in the Midwest and southern U.S. on Friday have meteorologists urging people to brace for dangerous weather including tornadoes, saying the conditions are similar to those a week ago that…