Tornadoes fueled by unusually warm air pummeled the South and Midwest on Friday, killing at least six people and injuring dozens more across Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois.

In Vicksburg, afternoon storms left about 1,400 Entergy customers without electricity, said area spokesman Don Arnold.

About 300 of those were in the Mississippi 27 area, where a severed utility line along Warriors Trail zapped power. Also, traffic was halted along the road that runs east and west across Mississippi 27.

The other 1,100 customers without electricity included those fed through Entergy’s south substation, Arnold said. Power to that substation was restored about 7:15 Friday night.

Other outages were mostly scattered in south Warren County, Arnold said, and those customers could expect to see the lights come back on at about noon today.

Other reports during the storm, which moved through Warren County about 4 p.m. and passed within about an hour, included a downed tree on Interstate 20 at U.S. 61 North; a multiple-car pileup on the interstate at Edwards, near the Hinds County line; a blown-off garage roof on Lightcap Boulevard, off Halls Ferry Road; a tree on fire on Warrenton Road; fallen limbs on Cain Ridge Road; and hail downtown and at Walmart, off U.S. 61 South.

No injuries or major structural damage had been reported, officials said.

The threat of severe weather was expected to continue into the early morning hours of today, with conditions clearing in the afternoon. Temperatures were expected to be chilly today, with a high of about 58.

After hitting Vicksburg, storms moved east toward the Jackson-metro area. Reports included damage to the roof of the Tinseltown movie theater at Pearl; damage in Byram; 19,000 Entergy customers in Hinds and Rankin counties without power; and flooding that shut down U.S. 80 between Brandon and Pelahatchie.

A Jackson television crew reported spotting a tornado over Interstate 55, but said the twister didn’t touch down.

Before moving into Mississippi, the storm killed three people in the northwestern Arkansas hamlet of Cincinnati when a tornado touched down just before sunrise Friday. Three others died when a storm spawned by the same weather system ripped up the Missouri countryside near Rolla. A number of storms were also reported in the St. Louis area.

“It sucked me out of my house and carried me across the road and dropped me,” Chris Sisemore of Cincinnati told The Associated Press on Friday. “I was Superman for a while. … You’re just free-floating through the air. Trees are knocking you and smacking you down.”

Sisemore said he tried to crawl under his bed and cling to the carpet, fearful a nearby pecan tree would fall into his home. As he nursed cuts, scrapes and bruises to his arms, knees and back, he recalled opening his eyes as he flew because he didn’t believe he’d see 2011.

“I wanted to see the end coming. You’re only going to see it one time and I thought that was it,” he said. “It takes more than a tornado to get me.”

In south-central Missouri, 21-year-old Megan Ross and her 64-year-old grandmother Loretta Anderson died at a Lecoma farm where their family lived among three mobile homes and two frame houses, Dent County Emergency Management Coordinator Brad Nash said.

A mother and an infant in another trailer were able to run to a sturdier home, he said.

“We found debris from one of the trailers a mile away,” Nash said. “One of the frames of the trailer was 15 feet up in a tree. All the frames were all twisted up,” and a refrigerator from one of the mobile homes was found 200 yards away, he said.

Another woman was killed north of Rolla, not far from Lecoma, when a tornado destroyed a home, said emergency managers in Phelps County.

Phelps County Emergency Management Director Sandy North identified that county’s victim as Alice Cox, 69, who was from Belle, Mo., and was in the Rolla area visiting a friend, who was seriously injured in the storm.

In Arkansas, Gerald Wilson, 88, and his wife, Mamie, 78, died in their home and Dick Murray, 78, died after being caught by the storm while milking cows, Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder said.

Sisemore’s mother, Margie Sisemore, said her son thought a tree had come crashing through his window.

“He jumped under his bed, said it grabbed his legs — took him up through the ceiling and he landed over yonder,” she said, gesturing across the street near where the Wilsons died.

In Rolla, Judy Welch, 57, said she called her husband after the storm passed to tell him their home was gone but that she was able to account for their 13 dogs, including nine German shepherds. A number of cats that had scurried away hadn’t returned.

“I kept praying to God. The house shook so bad, the windows were bowing and then going back to normal,” Welch said.