Little Rock: Powerful tornado rips through Arkansas city leaving trail of destruction

A powerful tornado has ripped through a southern city in the United States, leaving a trail of damage in its wake.

More than 350,000 people, across Little Rock and North Little Rock, Arkansas, were at risk from what the US National Weather Service called a "large and destructive tornado."

No immediate reports of injuries were made by officials.

Locals captured footage of a funnel tearing its way through the city.

Heavy damage and debris was reported by the Little Rock Fire Department in the western part of the city, with firefighters performing rescue operations, the department said on its Facebook page.

Passengers and airport employees at Clinton National Airport took shelter in bathrooms and were ordered to stay there until late afternoon.

Aerial footage showed several rooftops had been torn from homes in Little Rock and nearby Benton.

Poweroutage.us, which tracks electricity cuts, said nearly 70,000 customers in Arkansas were out of power on Friday afternoon, while some 32,000 were suffering from outages in neighboring Oklahoma.

Further electricity cuts were reported in Kansas, Missouri and Texas.

Meteorologists are urging residents in at least 15 states, spread across the midwest and south of the country, to brace for dangerous weather, including tornadoes.

Meanwhile, more than 85 million people have been placed under weather advisories, after the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center forecast an unusually large outbreak of thunderstorms.

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