A tornado ripped through southeastern Missouri before dawn on Wednesday, killing five people and causing widespread destruction as the third in a series of deadly massive storms over the past two weeks struck the nation's heartland. Forecasters are keeping a wary eye out for more extreme weather as this year's early severe storm season continues. The storms have spawned dozens of tornadoes, mainly in the South and Midwest, that have killed at least 63 people. Just last weekend, confirmed or suspected tornadoes in at least eight states laid waste to neighborhoods across a broad swath of the country. The Missouri tornado touched down around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday and moved through a rural area of Bollinger County, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of St. Louis. Trees were uprooted, homes turned into piles of splinters, and one building was flipped on its side. Five people were killed and five were injured, State Highway Patrol Superintendent Eric Olson said at a news conference. Residents in the village of Glen Allen said at least some of the victims were members of a family who lived in a trailer along a state highway. Little was left of the trailer Wednesday beyond its concrete pads and an axle. A large stuffed animal was lodged in the branch of a downed tree, and furniture, clothing and kitchenware were scattered in a field. Also read: Storms strike Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana; 7 reported dead Olson said 12 structures were destroyed and dozens more damaged. The damage was concentrated around Glen Allen and the small rural community of Grassy, which are separated by a hunting area, said Bollinger County Sheriff Casey Graham in a Facebook post. He didn’t immediately release the victims’ names. Charles Collier, 61, said he saw the coroner’s van drive by with its lights on in Glen Allen, where he owns a storage facility. “That was a sad, sad sight -- knowing there was bodies in there,” said Collier. “I was just numb, thinking about all these other people, what they’re going through.” Josh Wells said that the tornado tore half of the roof off his Glen Allen home and pushed in his bedroom wall. Luckily, he fled beforehand with his son to his sister’s home because it has a basement. “We all ran down and huddled against the wall and my brother-in-law made it down just seconds before we heard the roaring sound of the wind and debris crashing around us,” he said. While his sister’s home held up, the area reeked of gas because a propane unit was damaged. Midwest tornadoes have typically occurred later in the spring, but this year’s early spate of severe weather continues a trend seen over the past few years, said Bill Bunting, chief of forecast operations at the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. “Although we will likely have several relatively quiet days after the current weather system has moved east of the U.S., we are entering the time of the year where the potential for severe weather increases and much more of the U.S. becomes at risk,” Bunting said in a email. Typically, dry air from the West going up over the Rockies and crashing into warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico are what make the U.S. so prone to tornadoes and other severe storms, experts say. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson toured the storm damage area Wednesday and said President Joe Biden had called to assure him of federal help. Local agencies anticipate months of recovery efforts, he said. “I will tell you, I just know because I grew up in a little small town, these small towns, these counties and these cites will come together to help one another out,” Parson said. Justin Gibbs, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Paducah, Kentucky, said the tornado remained on the ground for roughly 15 minutes, traveling an estimated 15-20 miles (24-32 kilometers). Based on early data, the tornado received a preliminary EF-2 rating, packing wind speeds of 130 mph (228 kph). Gibbs noted that tornadoes are especially dangerous when they touch down late at night or early in the morning, as this one did. “It’s definitely a nightmare from a warning standpoint,” Gibbs said. “It’s bad anytime, but it’s especially bad at 3:30 in the morning.” A phone weather alert awakened Bobby Masters, who said debris was slamming his Glen Allen home as he took shelter in his basement with his family. He recalled hearing a roar as the tornado passed. “I had never heard a tornado before. They say it sounds like a freight train and that is exactly what it sounds like,” he said. “The good Lord spared us, our family and our house.” Keith Lincoln, 56, also was awakened by a phone alert. He huddled in a bathtub with his wife and 18-year-old daughter and prayed: “Just save us and the house.” Lincoln spent the afternoon patching his roof but was thankful his prayer was mostly answered. Chris Green, 35, found a small black dog dead in the debris. “I can’t just leave it here,” he said as he and his father buried the animal. The area is rural, with residents mostly farming, cutting timber or working construction jobs, said Larry Welker, Bollinger County's public administrator. The county's population is around 10,500. The battered communities are tiny, little more than a few scattered homes and businesses. The storms moving through the Midwest and South had threatened some areas still reeling from the deadly bout of bad weather last weekend. At one point, the Storm Prediction Center said up to 40 million people were at risk in an area that included Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit and Memphis, Tennessee. In central Illinois, authorities said five people were hurt and about 300 homes were without power due to a tornado that struck in Fulton County on Tuesday evening. Chris Helle, who directs the county’s Emergency Services Disaster Agency, said one of the people injured was in critical condition. Helle said the damage was concentrated near the town of Bryant, about 200 mile (322 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. Helle said numerous homes were destroyed, but he credited people for listening to advance warnings and taking shelter. Officials said another tornado touched down Tuesday morning in the western Illinois community of Colona. Local news reports showed wind damage to some businesses there.

A fast-moving fire in Northern California injured several people, a fire official said, and destroyed multiple homes Friday as thousands of residents were forced to leave immediately, jamming roadways at the start of a sweltering Labor Day weekend. The Northern California blaze destroyed multiple homes Friday and forced as many as 7,500 residents to leave immediately, jamming roadways at the start of a sweltering Labor Day weekend. Suzi Brady, a Cal Fire spokeswoman, said several people were injured and taken to a hospital. She said she didn’t know the extent of their injuries. Brady said residents are still evacuating and that the blaze continues to rapidly spread amid 36 mph (58 kph) winds. She said more resources have been requested to aid at least 200 firefighters battling the blaze on the ground and from the air. Brady didn’t know how many people have been injured or where they were taken. The Mill Fire started on the property of Roseburg Forest Products, a lumber mill north of the town of Weed, and quickly burned through homes and prompted evacuation orders for all of Weed and the nearby communities of Lake Shastina and Edgewood, with a combined population of about 7,500 people, said Weed councilwoman Sue Tavalero. Also read: California wildfires prompt evacuations amid heat wave She said there were burned homes in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood but “I don’t know how many. I’m positive several homes have been lost.” The blaze spread quickly in hot and windy conditions, the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. The Mill Fire had burned 1.4 square miles (3.6 square kilometers), according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Rebecca Taylor, communications director for Roseburg Forest Products based in Springfield, Oregon, said she did not know where or how the fire started but the company evacuated its veneer plant in Weed after the fire was reported at 12:58 p.m. Friday. Some of its property is burned. The plant employs 145 people, although not all were on shift at the time, Taylor said. “We’re just devastated to see this fire affecting the community in this way,” she said. Evacuees described heavy smoke and chunks of ash raining down from massive flames near Weed, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of the Oregon border. Christopher Rock, an employee at the Mayten Store in Montague, 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Weed, said fire evacuees had swarmed the pumps. “It’s really busy right now,” he said. “You can’t see the flames from here, just a lot of smoke.” Marco Noriega, brew master at Mount Shasta Brewing Company, said he received the notice to evacuate around 1 p.m. and he sent the 10 customers and three employees away. He said the power is out and he has received little information. The wind was blowing from the south, keeping the fire away. He sounded calm as he cleaned up. “I’ve been through it before, so long as the wind stays in the direction it is, I’m all right. But I know the wind switches quickly,” he said by phone. The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for Siskiyou County from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday when area winds were expected to reach up to 31 mph (50 kph). Willo Balfrey, 82, an artist from Lake Shastina, said she was painting Friday afternoon when her grandson, who is a member of the California Highway Patrol, called to warn her of the fast-spreading flames. “He said, ‘don’t linger, grab your computer, grab what you need and get out of the house now. It’s coming your way.’ So I did,” Balfrey told The Associated Press. She grabbed a suitcase full of important documents, as well as water and her computer, iPhone and chargers, and headed out the door. “I’ve reached the philosophy that if I have all my paperwork, what’s in the house is not that important,” she said. She stopped to get her neighbor and they drove to a church parking lot in Montague, where about 40 other vehicles were also parked. Olga Hood heard about the fire on her scanner and stepped onto to the front porch of her Weed home to see smoke blowing over the next hill. With the notorious gusts that tear through the town at the base of Mount Shasta, she didn’t wait for an evacuation order. She packed up her documents, medication and little else, said her granddaughter, Cynthia Jones. “With the wind in Weed everything like that moves quickly. It’s bad,” Jones said by phone from her home in Medford, Oregon. “It’s not uncommon to have 50 to 60 mph gusts on a normal day. I got blown into a creek as a kid.” Hood’s home of nearly three decades was spared from a blaze last year and from the devastating Boles Fire that tore through town eight years ago, destroying more than 160 buildings, mostly homes. Hood wept as she discussed the fire from a relative’s house in the hamlet of Granada, Jones said. She wasn’t able to gather photos that had been important to her late husband. In Southern California, firefighters were making progress Friday against two big wildfires despite dangerously hot weather. Containment of the Route Fire along Interstate 5 north of Los Angeles increased to 37% and it remained at just over 8 square miles (21 square kilometers) in size, a Cal Fire statement said. California is in the grip of a prolonged heat wave. Temperatures have been so high that residents have been asked for three consecutive days to conserve power during late afternoon and evening hours when solar energy declines. On Wednesday, seven firefighters working the Route Fire in triple-digit temperatures had to be taken to hospitals for treatment of heat illnesses. All were released. The tally of destroyed structures remained at two, and all evacuation orders were lifted. In eastern San Diego County, the Border 32 Fire remained at just under 7 square miles (18 square kilometers) and containment increased to 20%. More than 1,500 people had to evacuate the area near the U.S.-Mexico border when the fire erupted Wednesday. All evacuations were lifted by Friday afternoon. Two people were hospitalized with burns. Three homes and seven other buildings were destroyed. Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.  

Russian forces are raising “true hell” in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, despite assessments they were taking an operational pause, a regional governor said Saturday, while another Ukrainian official urged people in Russian-occupied southern areas to evacuate quickly “by all possible means” before a Ukrainian counteroffensive. Deadly Russian shelling was reported in Ukraine’s east and south. The governor of the eastern Luhansk region, Serhyi Haidai, said Russia launched more than 20 artillery, mortar and rocket strikes on the region overnight and its forces were pressing toward the border with the Donetsk region. “We are trying to contain the Russians’ armed formations along the entire front line,” Haidai wrote on Telegram. Last week, Russia captured the last major stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in Luhansk, the city of Lysychansk. Analysts predicted Moscow’s troops likely would take some time to rearm and regroup. But “so far there has been no operational pause announced by the enemy. He is still attacking and shelling our lands with the same intensity as before,” Haidai said. He later said the Russian bombardment of Luhansk was suspended because Ukrainian forces had destroyed ammunition depots and barracks used by the Russians. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, appealed to residents of Russian-held territories in the south to evacuate quickly so the occupying forces could not use them as human shields during a Ukrainian counteroffensive. “You need to search for a way to leave, because our armed forces are coming to de-occupy,” she said. “There will be a massive fight.” Speaking at a news conference late Friday, Vereshchuk said a civilian evacuation effort was underway for parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. She declined to give details, citing safety. It was not clear how civilians were expected to safely leave Russian-controlled areas while missile strikes and artillery shelling continue in surrounding areas, whether they would be allowed to depart or even hear the government’s appeal. The war’s death toll continued to rise. Five people were killed and eight more wounded in Russian shelling Friday of Siversk and Semyhirya in the Donetsk region, its governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, wrote Saturday on Telegram. Read: 100 days of Russia-Ukraine conflict – no quick end in sight In the city of Sloviansk, named as a likely next target of Russia’s offensive, rescuers pulled a 40-year-old man from the rubble of a building destroyed Saturday by shelling. Kyrylenko said multiple people were under the debris. Russian missiles also killed two people and wounded three others Saturday in the southern city of Kryvyi Rih, according to regional authorities. “They deliberately targeted residential areas,” Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, said on Telegram. Kryvyi Rih’s mayor, Oleksandr Vilkul, asserted on Facebook that cluster munitions had been used and urged residents not to approach unfamiliar objects in the streets. More explosions were reported Saturday evening. Kryvyi Rih is the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who visited Friday to meet with Vilkul and the brigadier general who commands troops in the region. Zelenskyy’s office said he was briefed on the “construction of defensive structures,” the support of the troops, the supply of food and medicine to the city and the help given people who had fled to Kryvyi Rih after being driven out of their homes elsewhere in Ukraine. In northeast Ukraine, a Russian rocket strike on Saturday hit the center of Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, injuring six people, including a 12-year-old girl, authorities said. “An Iskander ballistic missile was probably used,” the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office said. “One of the missiles hit a two-story building, which led to its destruction. Neighboring houses were damaged.” The city has been targeted throughout the war, including several times in the past week. As survivor Valentina Mirgorodksaya dabbed at a cut on her cheek, first responders warily inspected the building shattered in Saturday’s strike. Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych reported on Telegram that six Russian missiles were fired at his city in southern Ukraine near the Black Sea, but caused no casualties. “On this day alone, Russia hit Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Krivyi Rih, villages in the Zaporizhzhia region,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. “It hit residential areas, absolutely consciously and on purpose. ... For days on end, the brutal strikes of Russian artillery … don’t stop. Such terrorist action can be stopped only with weapons — modern and powerful ones.” Read: Russia takes small cities, aims to widen east Ukraine battle Russian defense officials claimed Saturday that their forces destroyed a hangar housing U.S. howitzers in the Donetsk region, near the town of Chasiv Yar. There was no immediate response from Ukraine. In other developments on Saturday: — Zelenskyy dismissed several ambassadors, including Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, who has been an outspoken advocate of Kyiv’s cause but also ruffled feathers in Berlin. He was persistently critical of Germany’s perceived slowness to provide heavy weapons. He also faced criticism for an interview in which he defended Stepan Bandera, a controversial World War II-era Ukrainian nationalist. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying Melnyk was only speaking for himself. Zelenskyy said the dismissals of the ambassadors were part of a routine rotation. Melnyk had served in the post since 2015. — Ukraine’s national police force said it was opening a criminal investigation into the Russian military’s alleged destruction of crops in the southern Kherson region. In a Telegram post, it accused Russian troops of not allowing residents to put out fires in fields and otherwise sabotaging the harvest. — The British Defense Ministry said Russian forces in Ukraine were now being armed with “obsolete or inappropriate equipment,” including MT-LB armored vehicles taken out of long-term storage that do not provide the same protection as modern tanks. “While MT-LBS have previously been in service in support roles on both sides, Russia long considered them unsuitable for most frontline infantry transport roles,” the British ministry said on Twitter.   — Ukraine’s sports minister, Vadym Gutzeit, said 100 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed either on the battlefield or from Russian shelling, while 22 were captured by Russian forces. In a Facebook post, Gutzeit said more than 3,000 athletes are now in uniform.