3 Kids Among Dead in Tornado Strike

Officials say three children were among the five people killed when a tornado ripped through a northwest Oklahoma town early today and destroyed dozens of homes. It was one of a series of tornadoes that also struck Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska over the weekend, authorities said. Woodward Mayor Roscoe Hill said he didn't hear sirens before the tornado hit. The National Weather Service said the tornado struck at 12:18am. "We had a little tornado earlier .... and they blew all the sirens. When this one came in, our sirens weren't working. We didn't have a very good storm alert," he said.

Woodward was among the many communities in the nation's midsection under a "high-end, life-threatening event" that had been issued by the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. MSNBC reports that tornadoes are "most likely" to strike parts of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin this evening, the National Weather service said. "Severe storms are also possible in a band from Illinois and Missouri southward into Arkansas, northwest Louisiana and east Texas," the service added. (More Oklahoma stories.)