Twisters leave at least 6 dead

Storms whip through Midwest, Maryland

Little remains of this house in Providence, Kentucky.

PADUCAH, Kentucky (CNN) -- Tornadoes swept through southeastern Missouri, Illinois, western Kentucky and Maryland on Sunday, killing at least six people and damaging dozens of buildings, authorities said.

The twister system in the Midwest killed three people in three states early Sunday, while three others died in Maryland when a tornado touched down there Sunday night.

The pattern of damage in the Midwest led authorities to suspect that a single tornado -- not several -- caused most of the destruction early Sunday, said Jim Packett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Paducah. Packett said that authorities will not definitively know which twister or twisters caused the damage for several days.

"We may end up with a tornado path length of over 100 miles, if it all pans out like we think," said Packett, noting there was damage in at least 10 Midwest counties.

An F3 tornado -- about 4 miles long and packing winds up to 180 miles an hour, average strength for such a storm -- touched down around 12:40 a.m. (1:40 a.m. EDT) about 5 miles southwest of Marble Hill, Missouri, Packett said.

CNN NewsPass VIDEO Tornadoes swept through southeastern Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland and Virginia (April 29) Play video   EXTRA INFORMATION Gallery: Fury from the skies

The twister killed a 12-year-old boy in Marble Hill, about 90 miles south of St. Louis, and injured 16 others, a sheriff's dispatcher said.

In Dongola, Illinois, about 30 miles south of Carbondale, the tornado killed an elderly woman outside her mobile home, a sheriff's dispatcher said. Six others were injured and "a number" of homes and businesses were damaged, said Packett.

The storm caused damage in Illinois' Pope and Johnson counties as it made its way east and to the state's southern tip, said Packett. It then crossed the Ohio River into western Kentucky, causing damage in Livingston, Crittenden and Hopkins counties.

The twister blew 46 full freight cars off the railroad tracks in Providence before hitting Caldwell County, around Princeton, where 29 people were taken to the hospital and a number of homes and mobile homes were destroyed, according to Packett.

The storm killed a 12-year-old boy and caused extensive damage in Marble Hill, Missouri, south of St. Louis.

Officials in Breckinridge County, Kentucky, said a man was killed outside his mobile home on the southwest side of Irvington, about 40 miles southwest of Louisville. The storm also damaged a subdivision on the south side of town.

"There was a pretty good-size motor home turned upside down on a boat," said Breckinridge Sheriff's Deputy Sandra Wood.

'It was a roar, and then I saw the funnel'

The tornado Sunday night in southern Maryland killed three people and injured dozens of others. The twister slammed into businesses and houses, forcing people into shelters, according to government and weather officials.

The tornado went through a 12-mile area, said Nina Voehl of the Charles County Sheriff's Office, starting in the small town of La Plata and going east through what is largely a rural area with a lot of farmland. After passing through the town of Benedict, the system plowed across the Patuxent River and entered Calvert County. The weather system produced golf-ball sized hail all along the way.

Two people were killed in La Plata in Charles County, about 25 miles south of Washington, Charles County officials said. One was in a residence and the other was in a vehicle at the corner of Routes 301 and 6. Another was killed in Hallowing Point near Prince Frederick in next-door Calvert County, said Don Hall, the county's emergency management director.

Charles County Commissioner Murray Levy said he saw the tornado touch down not far from his home, just outside La Plata.

"I'd never heard anything like that in my life," he said. "My wife and I were on the back porch and she said, 'Do you hear that?' And it was a roar, and then I saw the funnel, and then it touched down just to the east of our house."

About 12 people from Charles County were taken to trauma centers in the region and at least 81 people from the county were sent to area hospitals for treatment, Voehl said.

At least 35 people were staying at a shelter set up at local high school in Charles County and 11 families in Calvert County have been put up by the Red Cross in hotels, Maryland officials said.

Storm system knocks down buildings in Virginia

Strong winds and hefty hail battered Bedford County, Virginia, on Sunday afternoon, damaging at least 50 homes but causing no major injuries, officials said.

The system knocked down a number of buildings in Bedford, a city of 70,000 about 20 miles east of Roanoke, said county Sheriff Mike Brown.

Authorities shut down the downtown area and a number of streets "just in case anybody had looting on their mind," Brown said.

National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Hudgins said the storm, which moved through the area around 4:30 p.m., could have been a tornado or just strong winds. The Virginia storms did belong to a different band of storms than the one that caused a tornado in Maryland, he said.

Most of the damage happened along Route 460, a major four-lane highway linking Roanoke and Lynchburg that runs through the center of town, Brown said. The Red Cross was on the scene and the local Wal-Mart was serving food, he said.