Tornadoes tear through Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Tennessee

The number of preliminary tornado reports during Friday's storms has ticked up to at least 53, according to the Storm Prediction Center.

Here's where they have been reported:

Multiple houses in the small city of Sullivan, Indiana, have sustained “severe damage” due to storms in the area, said Sullivan Mayor Clint Lamb.

Sullivan is around 100 miles southwest of Indianapolis.

The mayor also thanked local police, fire, and ambulance services for their assistance.

Lamb said that a tornado had touched down in the area, however, the National Weather Service has not confirmed any of the storms in the state are tornadoes.

According to meteorologist Andrew White with the Indianapolis Office of the National Weather Service, three Indiana counties — Howard, Johnson, and Sullivan — have been hit hard by storms.

Howard County Emergency Management Director Janice Hart, however, described the damage in the county as minor and reported no injuries.

Sullivan County was under a tornado warning and a special statement had been sent out on the storm that moved through the county. 

A tornado watch is in effect for northern Alabama, northern Mississippi and central Tennessee until 7:00 a.m. CDT (8 a.m. ET) Saturday, according to the Storm Prediction Center.

That includes the cities of Nashville, Tennessee, and Huntsville, Alabama.

The areas could see tornadoes rated as EF-2 or higher in intensity, with destructive winds topping 111 mph. Storms could also bring wind gusts up to 70 mph and isolated events of hail nearly the size of an egg.

More than 200 people were packed inside the Apollo Theatre in Belvidere, Illinois, for an event when its roof collapsed Friday night, leaving one person dead and dozens injured, the city fire chief said.

The collapse occurred as a storm hit Belvidere's Boone County, with winds in the area reported to be in excess of 50 mph. It is not yet clear whether the storm caused the theater's roof to cave in.

First responders arrived within minutes of the collapse and began pulling people from the debris, Belvidere Fire Department Chief Shawn Schadle said.

Twenty-eight people were taken to hospital by ambulance, he said, adding that five had severe injuries.

Rescue teams performed an initial search of the theater and were carrying out a second search, "looking into the stabilization of the building,” Schadle said.

The venue's event coordinator estimated that approximately 260 concertgoers, staff and performers were in the theater, the chief said. The night's headliner, metal band Morbid Angel, announced on Facebook that their show was canceled due to the weather.

One of the other bands set to play, Revocation, said in a Facebook post that "everyone in the bands and crew are safe." It added, "Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this disaster."

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said in a tweet that his office is “closely monitoring” the situation.

A tornado watch is in effect for southeastern Indiana, northern Kentucky and western Ohio until 5 a.m. EDT, according to the Storm Prediction Center.

This includes Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio.

Areas impacted by the brewing storms could see a handful of tornadoes, wind gusts of up to 70 mph, and egg-sized hail.

Nearly 300,000 energy customers are in the dark late Friday night in states impacted by storms sweeping through large swaths of the central US, according to tracker PowerOutage.us.

Illinois has the most outages reported with more than 100,000 customers without power, followed by nearly 69,000 outages in Arkansas, the tracker shows.

Here's a run down so far:

Five people are being treated in a Covington, Tennessee, hospital after a tornado touched down in the city, a hospital official said.

The Baptist Memorial Hospital-Tipton was not damaged by the storm and its staff are still able to receive and treat patients, Kimberly Alexander, director of media relations for Baptist Memorial Health Care, said.

The tornado has rendered the city "impassable," the Covington Police Department said on Facebook Friday night, sharing photos of roads blocked by downed power poles and large trees toppled in front of homes.

Police asked residents to stay off the roads due to hazards and so emergency crews can pass through to critical areas.

The number of preliminary tornado reports made in the US Friday has risen to 43, according to the Storm Prediction Center.

Here's where they have been reported:

At least two people have died in hard-hit Wynne, Arkansas, as a result of tornadoes that have torn through the area, St. Francis County Coroner Miles Kimble confirmed to CNN.

That's in addition to an earlier report of one person dead in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

Kimble is assisting the coroner's office in Wynne, which is located in Cross County.

CNN has reached out to the Cross County coroner’s office.

Footage from Wynne shows significant damage, with roofs ripped off of homes and a local school and trees uprooted and tossed across roadways. The town was "cut in half by damage from east to west," Wynne Mayor Jennifer Hobbs told CNN.