Strong winds, downpours and at least one tornado battered the central U.S. Tuesday, a day after more than 20 tornadoes rolled through the region.

Still more severe storms, with large hail the greatest threat, were forecast for Wednesday, the Storm Prediction Center said, from Texas to the Great Lakes. Eastern Kansas and western Missouri were the areas at highest risk for the foul weather.

On Tuesday, flooding led to high-water rescues in Oklahoma and a tornado roared near Tulsa International Airport.

"Luckily no damage," airport officials tweeted Tuesday morning.

One person was injured as travelers were briefly moved to shelters and some flights were canceled.

In Stillwater, Oklahoma State University shut down and emergency responders were rescuing people from homes overwhelmed by high water. El Reno, 25 miles west of Oklahoma City, was partially underwater.

City Hall and schools were closed, and first responders were "working diligently to assist the citizens affected by high water," Mayor Matt White said.

"All the ponds and all the creeks are completely full," he said. "There is nowhere for the water to go."

In Texas, high winds and storms forced Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport to alter traffic patterns, causing some arriving flights to be delayed an average of 1 hour and 36 minutes.

A tornado was also reported in the Springfield, Missouri, area on Tuesday afternoon, the National Weather Service said.

Looking ahead, after a stormy Wednesday, more bad weather is forecast for the rest of the month for the central U.S.: "It looks like there is no end in sight to this very active pattern of severe weather into the end of May," AccuWeather Extreme Meteorologist Reed Timmer said.

While storms continue to batter the central U.S., extreme heat will be the main weather story in the Southeast for the next several days. Record-breaking high temperatures, some nearing 100 degrees, are possible in several states from Alabama to Virginia.

Earlier in the week, storms Monday produced golf-ball-size hail and strong wind gusts across parts of Texas and Oklahoma. Confirmed tornadoes left damage behind near Mangum, Oklahoma, and Paducah, Texas, AccuWeather said.

Tornadoes in sparsely populated areas damaged homes and barns in Oklahoma on Monday, but no injuries were reported. In the southwestern Oklahoma town of Mangum. Glynadee Edwards, the Greer County emergency management director, said roofs of homes were damaged and the high school’s agriculture barn was destroyed. The livestock survived, however.

“The pigs are walking around wondering what happened to their house,” she said.

Another tornado severely damaged a house and destroyed a barn in the northern Oklahoma unincorporated community of Lucien.

Schools closed across Oklahoma ahead of the bad weather. Many of the largest school systems in the center of the state (as well as the University of Oklahoma campus) closed all day Monday, which appears to be the first time such a mass closure has occurred in central Oklahoma on the night before severe weather, according to Weather Underground.

The severe weather this week comes after a string of wild-weather days across the Midwest last week, when at least 50 reports of tornadoes were logged across the central and southern Plains, AccuWeather said. (Source: USA Today)

Story Date: May 22, 2019