Some of the first tornadoes struck in Missouri around dawn on Thursday and a child has been reported as killed due to the extreme weather.
As many as a dozen tornadoes have been reported already and Linn County Sheriff Marvin Stites said that some people in the areas affected by the storms had been forced to leave their homes and find shelter elsewhere.
A band of storms stretching from Minnesota in the north to Louisiana on the Gulf Coast has formed and the Storm Prediction Centre warned that extreme weather was now likely to be experienced "across the lower Ohio valley, lower and mid-Mississippi valley, eastward across the Gulf and Atlantic coastal states".
