1 dead after severe weather tears through central US, including flooding in Texas and Kansas

One person has died after severe weather tore through parts of the central U.S., including heavy rain in Dallas, a tornado that touched down in the Kansas City area and flash flooding in Kansas that forced firefighters to rescue dozens of people, including stranded motorists.
A Dallas man died Wednesday after his vehicle became stuck in high water, authorities said. He was in one of two cars submerged under a bridge on Interstate 635, the Dallas Fire-Rescue Department said. Dallas police said officers were able to rescue one driver, and the body of the other driver was recovered by Dallas-Fire Rescue.
In and around Wichita in south-central Kansas, firefighters made about 70 water rescues after heavy rains caused flash flooding, Robb Lawson, a local National Weather Service meteorologist said.
Sedgwick County's emergency management director, Julie Stimson, said at a briefing Tuesday night that the county had received anywhere from 1 1/2 inches to 7 inches (4 centimeters to 18 centimeters) of rain since Monday. She warned motorists who run into flooded areas not to drive around barricades or emergency vehicles, and to turn around instead.
The Wichita Fire Department used boats to rescue several motorists trapped in their cars. While the water sometimes reached windshield height, some people still attempted to drive through it.
'We have to put ourselves in danger with our life jackets and our boats to get them into a life jacket and into a boat to get them out of the water,' Fire Capt. Lance Diffenbaugh told KSN-TV. 'So there's no sense in it if they can just turn around and wait 10 minutes for the water to go down.'
A few roads remained closed Wednesday morning, according to the county's interactive map.
About 30 miles (48 kilometers) east, the torrential rainfall caused the Walnut River to overflow, flooding several streets in El Dorado and sending people scrambling for safety.
'By the time we got most of the stuff out of there and were going to get the last few things, it was already up to our waist, and we were pretty much swimming to get out,' resident Michelle Yerge told KAKE-TV.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly issued a disaster emergency declaration to enable state agencies to provide assistance.
Severe storms slammed the Kansas City area on Tuesday, with high winds toppling a tractor-trailer on Interstate 435, overturning portable toilets and barriers at the complex where the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals have side-by-side stadiums, and downing trees. The weather service warned of a tornado and urged people to take cover as rain battered the area. No major damage was reported.
Brad Temeyer, a weather service meteorologist, said a tornado touched down in Independence, Missouri, which is northeast of the Chiefs' and Royals' complex. He said a weather service survey team was working in the area Wednesday to determine whether that twister hit the sports complex first, or whether a tornado touched down there.
Severe weather on Tuesday also disrupted the Indiana Pacers' travel plans to the NBA Finals in Oklahoma City, where heavy rain and wind interrupted airport arrivals and departures. The team's charter was first diverted to Tulsa, Oklahoma. The plane then took a scenic route around another band of weather before finally landing in Oklahoma City about 3 1/2 hours behind schedule.
Wednesday's forecast for Kansas called for dry conditions, but more storms were forecast for Thursday. Officials warned that the soil in the area is saturated and even an inch or two of rainfall could lead to localized flooding.
'We're kind of staying in somewhat of a wet, kind of cool, pattern for the next several days,' Lawson said in an interview with AP Radio.
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This story has been corrected to show that the name of the town in Kansas east of Wichita is El Dorado, not Dorado.
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The Independent

31 minutes ago

• The Independent

Trump says Iran strikes ‘spectacular military success' and warns ‘bully' Iran to ‘make peace' or face ‘greater' attacks

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Sky News

43 minutes ago

• Sky News

US warplanes transit through UK: Here's what the flight tracking data shows

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An air traffic control recording from Wednesday suggests that F-22 Raptors are among the planes being sent across the Atlantic, while 12 F-35 fighter jets were photographed travelling from the UK to the Middle East on Wednesday. Many US military planes are passing through UK A growing number of US Air Force planes have been passing through the UK in recent days. Analysis of flight tracking data at three key air bases in the UK shows 63 US military flights landing between 16 and 19 June - more than double the rate of arrivals earlier in June. On Thursday, Sky News filmed three US military C-17A Globemaster III transport aircraft and a C-130 Hercules military cargo plane arriving at Glasgow's Prestwick Airport. Flight tracking data shows that one of the planes arrived from an air base in Jordan, having earlier travelled there from Germany. What does Israel need from US? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on 15 March that his country's aim is to remove "two existential threats - the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile threat". Israel says that Iran is attempting to develop a nuclear bomb, though Iran says its nuclear facilities are only for civilian energy purposes. A US intelligence assessment in March concluded that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. President Trump dismissed the assessment on Tuesday, saying: "I think they were very close to having one." Forbes McKenzie says the Americans have a "very similar inventory of weapons systems" to the Israelis, "but of course, they also have the much-talked-about GBU-57". The GBU-57 is a 30,000lb bomb - the largest non-nuclear bomb in existence. Mr McKenzie explains that it is "specifically designed to destroy targets which are very deep underground". 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Satellite imagery captured on 15 June shows the aftermath of Israeli strikes on a missile facility near the western city of Kermanshah, which destroyed at least 12 buildings at the site. At least four tunnel entrances were also damaged in the strikes, two of which can be seen in the image below. Writing for Jane's Defence Weekly, military analyst Jeremy Binnie says it looked like the tunnels were "targeted using guided munitions coming in at angles, not destroyed from above using penetrator bombs, raising the possibility that the damage can be cleared, enabling any [missile launchers] trapped inside to deploy". "This might reflect the limited payloads that Israeli aircraft can carry to Iran," he adds. Penetrator bombs, also known as bunker-busters, are much heavier than other types of munitions and as a result require more fuel to transport. 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These include residential buildings, a school and a university. On Thursday, one missile hit the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, southern Israel's main hospital. More than 70 people were injured, according to Israel's health ministry. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran had struck a nearby technology park containing an IDF cyber defence training centre, and that the "blast wave caused superficial damage to a small section" of the hospital. However, the technology park is in fact 1.2km away from where the missile struck. Photos of the hospital show evidence of a direct hit, with a large section of one building's roof completely destroyed. Iran successfully struck the technology park on Friday, though its missile fell in an open area, causing damage to a nearby residential building but no casualties. Israel has killed much of Iran's military leadership It's not clear exactly how many people Israel's strikes in Iran have killed, or how many are civilians. 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"The Americans have an ability to keep up the pace of operations that the Israelis have started, and they're able to do it for an indefinite period of time." Additional reporting by data journalist Joely Santa Cruz and OSINT producers Freya Gibson, Lina-Sirine Zitout and Sam Doak.

BBC News

an hour ago

• BBC News

What we know about US airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities

US President Donald Trump says the American military has completed strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran, marking a significant escalation in the ongoing war between Iran and Israel."We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space," he wrote on Truth added that a "full payload of bombs" were dropped on Fordo, an enrichment plant hidden in a remote mountainside that is vital to Iran's nuclear officials say they were in "full coordination" with the US in planning these could respond by targeting US military assets in the region. Its officials had earlier warned that they would retaliate and that any US attack risked a regional war. Here is a breakdown of what we know so far. How did this start? Israel launched a surprise attack on dozens of Iranian nuclear and military targets on 13 June. It said its ambition was to dismantle its nuclear programme, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said would soon be able to produce a nuclear insists its nuclear ambitions are peaceful. In retaliation, Tehran launched hundreds of rockets and drones towards Israel. The two countries have continued exchanging strikes since, in an air war which has now lasted more than a has long said that he is opposed to Iran possessing a nuclear March, US national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard said that while Iran had increased its uranium stockpile to unprecedented levels, it was not building a nuclear weapon - an assessment that Trump recently said was "wrong".On the campaign trail, President Trump had criticised past US administrations for engaging in "stupid endless wars" in the Middle East, and he vowed to keep America out of foreign US and Iran were in nuclear talks at the time of Israel's surprise attack. Two days ago, President Trump had said he would give Iran two weeks to enter into substantial negotiations before striking - but that timeline turned out to be much, much live: US attacks Iran nuclear sitesIsrael-Iran: How did latest conflict start and where could it lead?Iran's secretive nuclear site that only a US bomb could hit What has the US bombed, and what weapons did it use? One of the sites the US attacked was a secretive nuclear site called Fordo. It is hidden away in a mountainside south of Tehran, and is believed to be deeper underground than the Channel Tunnel connecting the UK and uranium enrichment site is considered by experts to be vital to Iran's nuclear depth below the Earth's surface has made it difficult to reach with Israel's weaponry. Only the US was considered to have a "bunker buster" bomb strong and large enough to destroy American bomb is called the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It weighs 13,000kg (30,000lb), and is able to penetrate about 18m of concrete or 61m of earth before exploding, according to tunnels are thought to be 80m to 90m below the surface, so the MOP is not guaranteed to be successful, but it is the only bomb that could come officials have confirmed to the BBC's partner CBS News that MOPs were used in the strikes, with two for each target struck. What is the impact on the ground in Iran? It is unclear yet what damage the US attack has had on the nuclear enrichment facilities, or whether there are any injuries or deputy political director of Iran's state broadcaster, Hassan Abedini, said Iran evacuated these three nuclear sites a "while ago".Appearing on state-run television, he said Iran "didn't suffer a major blow because the materials had already been taken out".Iran has said that more than 200 people were killed since its latest round of fighting with Israel began, and more than 1,200 were Israel is ramping up security in the wake of the US attacks on Iran's key nuclear has tightened its public security restrictions across the country, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) upgrade - including a "prohibition on education activities, gatherings, and workplaces" - comes after the US strikes on Iran. How might Iran retaliate? Iran has been weakened significantly by Israel's attacks on its military bases so far, experts say, as well as the dismantling of its regional proxies in Lebanon (Hezbollah), in Syria and in Gaza (Hamas). But Iran is still capable of doing a considerable amount of officials warned the US against getting involved, saying it would suffer "irreparable damage" and that it risked an "all-out war" in the has threatened to target US bases in the region in retaliation. The US operates military sites across at least 19 regions in the Middle East, including in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab the most obvious targets for Iran is the US Navy's 5th Fleet HQ at Mina Salman in could also target a critical shipping route known as the Strait of Hormuz, which links the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean and through which 30% of the world's oil supply is transported. It could also attack on other sea routes that risk destabilising global could also target the assets of nearby countries it perceives to be aiding the US, which risks the war spilling over to the entire region. Does Trump need approval from Congress to send the US to war? Under US law, the president does not have the sole power to formally declare war on another country. Only Congress - lawmakers elected in the House of Representatives and the Senate - the law also states that the president is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces. That means he can deploy US troops and conduct military operations without a formal declaration of example, Trump's decision to conduct airstrikes in Syria in 2017 against the Assad regime did not require approval from Congress. Instead, Trump acted unilaterally, citing national security and humanitarian lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recently tried to limit Trump's ability to order US strikes on Iran by pushing a war powers resolution through Congress, though it may take weeks before it is put to a formal vote, and such measures are more symbolic than substantive.