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31 December 2010
Last updated at 13:08 ET
A tornado has killed three people, injured several others and caused power outages for thousands of homes and businesses in north-west Arkansas.
Three residents died in the small town of Cincinnati, local authorities said.
The tornado caused damage near a local highway in the town's centre and points west of Washington County, county dispatcher Josh Howerton said.
The storm also injured two people and destroyed five homes in nearby Benton County, officials said.
There were "lots of injuries", Mr Howerton told the Associated Press news agency.
Emergency responders were experiencing difficulties early on Friday in reaching the damaged areas because of power lines that had been knocked down, Rick Johnson, the deputy emergency manager for Washington County, said.
The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management said that power was out throughout Washington County.
'Unusual occurrence' The tornado hit Cincinnati, located about 20 miles (32km) west of the city of Fayetteville, around 0610 local time (1210GMT) on Friday, said Joe Sellers, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oklahoma.
Tornado warnings were issued by the weather service for north-west Arkansas roughly 10 minutes before the storm struck.
A local airport closed its doors and cancelled flights due to debris on its runway in Benton County, a region near the Arkansas state lines with Oklahoma and Missouri, Matt Garrity, the county's manager of emergency services, told the CNN news network.
The storm system that caused the tornado is moving north-east into Missouri and is maintaining its strength, which is an unusual occurrence, Mr Sellers said.
Large hail was reportedly falling north of the town of Mansfield in southern Missouri early on Friday afternoon.
A combination of warm, wet air in the region and colder air moving in from the west created the conditions necessary for the tornado, Mr Sellers said.
"Anytime you have a significant change in air mass there is going to be unsettled weather marking the two different air masses," he told AP.
The deaths in Cincinnati pushed this year's count of tornado-related fatalities in the US to 39 for the year.
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Three residents died in the small town of Cincinnati, local authorities said.
The tornado caused damage near a local highway in the town's centre and points west of Washington County, county dispatcher Josh Howerton said.
The storm also injured two people and destroyed five homes in nearby Benton County, officials said.
There were "lots of injuries", Mr Howerton told the Associated Press news agency.
Emergency responders were experiencing difficulties early on Friday in reaching the damaged areas because of power lines that had been knocked down, Rick Johnson, the deputy emergency manager for Washington County, said.
The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management said that power was out throughout Washington County.
'Unusual occurrence' The tornado hit Cincinnati, located about 20 miles (32km) west of the city of Fayetteville, around 0610 local time (1210GMT) on Friday, said Joe Sellers, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oklahoma.
Tornado warnings were issued by the weather service for north-west Arkansas roughly 10 minutes before the storm struck.
A local airport closed its doors and cancelled flights due to debris on its runway in Benton County, a region near the Arkansas state lines with Oklahoma and Missouri, Matt Garrity, the county's manager of emergency services, told the CNN news network.
The storm system that caused the tornado is moving north-east into Missouri and is maintaining its strength, which is an unusual occurrence, Mr Sellers said.
Large hail was reportedly falling north of the town of Mansfield in southern Missouri early on Friday afternoon.
A combination of warm, wet air in the region and colder air moving in from the west created the conditions necessary for the tornado, Mr Sellers said.
"Anytime you have a significant change in air mass there is going to be unsettled weather marking the two different air masses," he told AP.
The deaths in Cincinnati pushed this year's count of tornado-related fatalities in the US to 39 for the year.
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