The violent tornado was confirmed over the city at 11:43 p.m., moving northeast at 40 mph., according to the National Weather Service.
By 12:52 a.m. Thursday the storm had left extensive damage along Ellis Boulevard near U.S. 54, the Missouri Department of Public Safety reported on Twitter.
Jefferson City Police Department Lt. David Williams said during a televised briefing Thursday morning that there were no confirmed deaths, although he said there had been reports of injuries.
Williams said there were no confirmed reports of collapsed buildings. There have been several reports of damage to homes and businesses. The damage corridor appeared to extend along the south side of Jefferson City along Ellis Boulevard, Highway 54 and Stadium Boulevard, according to Williams.
“We were very fortunate last night that we didn’t have more injuries than what we had, and that we didn’t have more fatalities across the state,” Gov. Mike Parsons said during a press conference later in the morning.
Jefferson City police and other law enforcement were conducting door-to-door residential and business check to make sure no one was trapped or needed immediate medical attention. Crews also will evaluate the extent of the damage.
The first emergency sirens were activated in Jefferson City at 11:10 p.m. and a storm rotation was spotted 20 minutes later, Williams said. The first reports of damage within Cole County occurred at 11:38 p.m. Tornado sirens were re-activated at 11:40 p.m. and emergency personnel first received reports of damage in the city at 11:47 p.m., Williams said.
Power lines were down and first responders were going door to door. Traffic was being diverted.
Officials advised the public to treat all downed power lines as live and to stay out of areas with damage.
Jefferson City has a population of about 43,000 people. About 5,000 customers in the city were without power at 1:20 a.m., according to the Ameren power company’s online outage map. More than 6,400 customers of Three Rivers Electric Cooperative in the city and surrounding area were also without power as of 1:40 a.m., according to the company’s outage map.
Speaking to CNN shortly after 3 a.m., Jefferson City Mayor Carrie Tergin said the city had been preparing for flooding, including an emergency declaration and evacuations, before the tornado hit.
“We are already anticipating the flooding, we just didn’t anticipate this damage from the tornado,” she said.
Later in the morning, on the Today show, the mayor said she was not aware of anyone trapped inside their homes as had been reported overnight.
Tergin also said no major injuries had been reported, though there were some minor injuries.
There remained, however, a lot of damage in the city, with felled power lines and trees in many places. Some houses were missing roofs and walls. The tornado had left behind “a lot of devastation,” Tergin said.
The Red Cross of Greater Kansas City said in a message posted to Twitter that it has opened a shelter in Jefferson City at Thomas Jefferson Middle School, 1201 Fairgrounds Road.
Storms also hit other parts of the state Wednesday night.
In southwest Missouri, three people were killed in the Golden City area of Barton County after a “large and extremely dangerous tornado” was reported in the area.
The tornadoes Wednesday night came eight years to the day after Joplin was hit by an EF-5 tornado that killed 161 people in 2011.
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