One person is dead after a tornado swept into a mobile home park in Wisconsin and another person died when a twister hit a housing subdivision in Oklahoma.
The deaths comes as a massive severe storm system battered an area of the US stretching from the South Plains of Texas to the Great Lakes.
In Wisconsin, Barron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald told several media that the tornado damaged the Prairie Lakes Estates trailer park north of Chetek.
The National Weather Service reported the tornado touched down in the area just after 5.30pm on Tuesday.
Helicopter video from WCCO-TV and KARE-TV shows extensive damage at the trailer park, with several homes reduced to rubble.
"It's a mess," Fitzgerald told the Leader-Telegram of Eau Claire.
Rescuers pull an injured resident from a destroyed house in Elk City, Oklahoma. (Reuters) Source: Reuters
"It's pretty bad. We have at least one deceased so far and we're still in a search pattern."
Fitzgerald described the scene to KMSP-TV as "total devastation" and said first responders could hear people yelling for help when they arrived. He said at least one child was among the injured.
Chetek is about 175 kilometres northeast of Minneapolis/St Paul, and about 65 kilometres north of Eau Claire.
The Oklahoma storm struck about 7.15pm on Tuesday Tuesday, wrecking much of a subdivision on the southern fringe of Elk City, Oklahoma, west of Oklahoma City.
The storm knocked out telephone service into and out of the city.
But Fire Chaplain Danny Ringer told reporters at the scene late on Tuesday that one person was known dead from the twister.
He also said the storm destroyed 40 homes and damaged 50 to 75 others severely.
The mayor of the hard hit Wisconsin town, Jeff Martin, told KSTP-TV that numerous emergency vehicles went to the trailer park. He estimated the park had around 50 homes.
Neighbourhoods in Elk City, Oklahoma lay in ruins. (Reuters) Source: Reuters
Devin Feuerhelm told KMSP-TV that his sister, Lenna Samuelson, lives in the park with her two daughters, Ashley and Brenna. He said her sister also had her two-month-old grandson, Nolan, in the home when the storm hit, and they had nowhere to go but the bathtub.
Amazingly, Nolan escaped with just a couple of scratches, he said.
Samuelson's daughters suffered minor injuries, and the mother suffered a gash on her head, but he said all are expected to be fine.
While their home was flattened, the SUV next to it was untouched.
A mobile home is a particularly dangerous place to be during a tornado, according to the National Weather Service.
The Storm Prediction Center, which specialises in forecasting and gathering data on tornadoes, says that high winds during a tornado can rip a mobile home without a foundation from its moorings.
In 2011, when devastating tornadoes struck in Joplin, Missouri, and in Alabama and Mississippi, 111 of the 551 people killed nationwide in tornadoes, or 20 per cent, were in mobile homes, according to the Storm Prediction Center website.
