US Midwest hit by 70 tornadoes

search teams hunted on Monday through neighbourhoods devastated by an unusual November outbreak of tornadoes across the American mid-West. At least six people were killed and dozens injured as nearly 70 twisters ripped across several states in weather more common in spring than late autumn. In the small town of Washington, Illinois, where whole districts were destroyed, one family said they owed their survival to a six-year-old boy's insistence on following instructions taught at school.

Brevin Hunter urged his mother Lisa to take him and his brother into the basement on hearing the warning sirens, which she had supposed were for a drill. "Please, Mom," he said. "When you hear the siren, you need to go somewhere safe." Shortly after Mrs Hunter took Brevin and his brother Brody, 11, down to safety, a tornado knocked down the walls of their home. The bodies of Joseph Hoy, 80, and Frances Hoy, 78, a brother and sister, were found in a field near the farm where they had tried to ride out the storm.

At least four others died in southern Illinois. Members of a Tennessee punk band called Pillow Talk believe that they survived only because the vehicle in which they were driving near Peoria, Illinois, was so weighed down with music equipment. In Washington, a deeply religious community, the tally of dead and injured could have been much higher if so many residents had not been in the relatively safe structures of their churches for Sunday services when the tornadoes struck.

The storms came after cold winter jet streams blasting in from the north collided with an unseasonally warm and moist weather system.