6 twisters reported in KC area Wednesday

At least six unconfirmed tornadoes touched down late Wednesday morning in the Kansas City area, according to authorities, but only minor damage and no injuries were reported.
It was the second consecutive day of severe weather across the state, which included a storm Tuesday that killed two people in Stafford County.
One tornado Wednesday was reported in Louisburg about 10:50 a.m., Miami County Undersheriff Wayne Minckley said. He said officers saw the twister lift a pickup, spin it and drop it to the ground. The driver escaped with minor injuries as the storm moved north toward downtown Kansas City, Mo.
Authorities in Stafford County said Sharon Gleason pulled her Ford Explorer off U.S. 281 north of St. John to seek shelter from the storm about 5 p.m. Tuesday. She parked under a large cottonwood tree next to a farmstead's driveway, Stafford County Sheriff Jeff Parr said.
A tornado struck the farmstead, uprooting the cottonwood and smashing it into the Explorer. Gleason, 56, and her 17-year-old son, Jeffrey, were killed.
Her daughter, 21-year-old Kristin, was seriously injured. She is in fair condition at a Great Bend hospital.
"It was a very large cottonwood," Parr said. "The two that were killed were in the front seat of the Explorer."
The tornado was one of 10 confirmed twisters that touched down in central and western Kansas on Tuesday, said Larry Ruthi, meteorologist in charge of the Dodge City branch of the National Weather Service.
It's not unusual for motorists to seek shelter from hail storms underneath large trees, Ruthi said.
"Most of the time, that's a fairly safe thing to do," he said.
At least one other injury was reported in Barton County.
The tornadoes were part of an outbreak that killed at least 14 people in three states, including four in Arkansas and eight in Oklahoma, authorities said. Storms may have killed a man in Texas whose burned body was found near a downed power line.
While numerous thunderstorms raced through the Wichita metropolitan area, no tornadoes touched down.
But Wichita could easily have been added to a growing list of cities hammered by tornadoes, meteorologist Robb Lawson said.
"There was a fairly large tornado west-southwest of Enid (Okla.)," Lawson said. "Had it kept on course it would have come right through Wichita. Luckily, it collapsed."
The tornado threat in the Wichita area was stifled by all the strong thunderstorms that fired up in Oklahoma on Tuesday, Lawson said. Rain from the storms cooled the surrounding area, reducing the instability of the atmosphere enough that storms forming farther north did not produce tornadoes.
"Wichita lucked out," Lawson said.
Damage reports from Wednesday's storm in the Kansas City area were minor, said Sharon Watson, spokeswoman for the Kansas Division of Emergency Management. But areas throughout much of the state were still reporting power outages, tree damage and minor flooding from Tuesday's storm.
Gov. Sam Brownback urged Kansas residents to have an emergency plan in place. He said lives were saved when a tornado hit Reading on Saturday night because several residents had planned in advance to go to a United Methodist church for shelter.
"I know I tend to get complacent about storms when they come through... thinking, 'Well, OK, I've lived in Kansas my whole life. This isn't going to affect me.' But it does," Brownback said.
"I would really just hope that people would pay attention to the alarms when they go off, particularly when they're in their area, that they would have a plan ahead of time about what they would do."
Cleanup continued in Reading, where Saturday's tornado killed one person.
"Recovery seems to be going well," said Maj. Gen. Lee Tafanelli, director of the Kansas Division of Emergency Management and the adjutant general. "The town is receiving good support from surrounding communities and from volunteer organizations, as well as individuals."