Tornadoes Sweep 3 Plains States, Flattening Homes, Barns; One Dead

Thunderstorms rumbled across the Plains on Saturday, spawning tornadoes in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota that flattened homes and barns, downed power lines, killed a young girl and blew a woman out of her car, officials said.

“We’ve been having tornadoes all over the place. We’ve had a multitude of sightings in the area,” said Jim Fraser, dispatcher with the Thayer County Sheriff’s Department in Hebron, Neb.

A tornado tore through Lyon County, Iowa, destroying most of the buildings and a home at the Kenneth DeBoer farm near Little Rock. A young girl in the family was killed, and two persons were injured, Ellen Gordon of the state Disaster Services Office said.

Lyon County officials said an elderly woman in George was blown out of her car by the twister and required medical treatment.

Power outages were reported across Lyon County, a sheriff’s dispatcher said.

Tornadoes damaged several farm buildings in Parker, S.D., and ripped away a garage in nearby Davis, police said.

The same storm system earlier dumped up to two feet of snow on the Rockies, while the Midwest and South basked in a spring heat wave that set record highs in 23 cities across 11 states.

The mercury climbed to a summery 90 degrees in Atlanta and 89 in Springfield, Ill., the National Weather Service said.

The western storm blanketed parts of Colorado with 11 inches of snow and Alta, Utah, with two feet of snow, the weather service said.

Roads were snowpacked and slushy in the Colorado mountains, a state patrol dispatcher said.

Winter storm warnings were posted across the western and northern mountain areas of Wyoming and for much of western Montana. Eight to 12 inches of snow were possible in the higher elevations of southeast Montana, eastern Wyoming and South Dakota, the weather service said.