Tornado strikes Bates, Linn counties Wednesday night

A tornado on Wednesday swept though rural portions of two counties in Kansas and Missouri, injuring two residents and damaging about 15 homes along with numerous barns and even a power substation.

Linn County, Kan., and Bates County, Mo., received the brunt of the powerful supercell storm.

Around 7 p.m. in rural Linn County, Kan., about 15 homes sustained partial or total damage during the tornado, Linn County Sheriff Marvin Stites said.

He said two residents suffered minor cuts, which didn't require medical attention.

"We're talking about very, very minor injuries," Stites said. "I'm talking about Band-aid type cuts."

He said a number of barns, silos and other farm machinery sustained heavy damage.

The tornado completely destroyed a power substation, cutting electric power to many rural and city residents in that county, Stites said. Power crews with Heartland Electric worked into Thursday morning, trying to restore power to residents.

Attempts to contact Heartland Electric, which owns the power plant that supplies rural residents with electricity, were unsuccessful.

The supercell cloud spawned a tornado that periodically touched down multiple times while traveling swiftly east through the county. Luckily, Stites said, the storm stayed in rural areas of the county, rather than hitting one of the county's more populated areas like Mound City and Pleasanton.

Stites said the storm traveled about eight miles just south of Centerville and north of Blue Mound and Pleasanton.

The storm then crossed over the state line and into Bates County, Mo., where it damaged several barns near F Highway about nine miles west of Passaic, located in the west-central region of the county, Bates County Deputy Sheriff Terry Pierce said. He said he's not aware of any injuries associated with the tornado.

The windspeed of the storm and its classification, which is determined by a ranking based on the Fujita scale, is unknown. Officials with the National Weather Service are currently surveying the damage to determine that criteria, Pierce said.

Deputy sheriffs traveled the county after the storm and into Thursday morning, going door to door, checking the welfare of their residents.

Allen County Sheriff Tom Williams said one of his deputy sheriffs saw the cloud forming in the northern end of the county. A tornado warning was issued a short time later.

However, there were no reports of a tornado touching down in his county or any structural damage, Williams said.