By DAVID A. LIEB

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A tornado tore apart buildings in Missouri’s capital city as part of an overnight outbreak of severe weather across the state that left at least three people dead and dozens injured.

The National Weather Service confirmed that the large and destructive twister moved over Jefferson City shortly before midnight Wednesday.

“Across the state, Missouri’s first responders once again responded quickly and with strong coordination as much of the state dealt with extremely dangerous conditions that left people injured, trapped in homes, and tragically led to the death of three people,” Gov. Mike Parson said.

There were no immediate reports of any deaths or missing people in the capital city of about 40,000, but door-to-door checks were ongoing as of late morning.

Weather forecasters had been tracking the storm before it arrived in the capital city, and sirens first sounded in Jefferson City at 11:10 p.m. — about 30 minutes before the first property damage. Parson credited the warning system in central Missouri for saving lives.

Kenneth Harris, 86, and his 83-year-old wife, Opal, were found dead about 200 yards from their home, and Betty Berg, 56, was killed and her husband, Mark, seriously injured when their mobile home was destroyed, authorities said.

National Weather Service meteorologist Cory Rothstein said it’s possible that tornado had a 50-mile path and could have been on the ground for 80 minutes. Teams were surveying the path Thursday and trying to determine whether one or multiple tornadoes had touched down.

The severe weather moved in from Oklahoma, where rescuers struggled to pull people from high water. This week has seen several days of twisters and torrential rains in the Southern Plains and Midwest.

Kerry Ann Demetrius locked herself in the bathroom of her Jefferson City apartment as the storm approached.

“It sounded like stuff was being thrown around, everything was just banging together, and then it just went dead silent,” she said. She emerged to find the roof had been blown off her apartment building.

Austin Thomson, 25, was in the laundry room of his complex of two-story apartment buildings in Jefferson City when he saw sheets of rain coming down and a flagpole bend and slam to the ground in the wind. The windows broke, and he dove behind the washers and dryers.

After the storm had passed, he went outside to see the damage: “There’s basically one building that’s basically one story now.”

At the Cole County Sheriff’s office in Jefferson City, insulation, shingles and metal pieces lay on the ground outside the front doors.

Jefferson City school district offices were closed because many of its buildings were without power and sustained damage overnight. The state high school track championships scheduled this weekend in the city were moved to different sites in central Missouri, after the Missouri State High School Activities Association issued a release that warned, “Do not travel to Jefferson City.”

Another natural disaster could be imminent in Jefferson City. Most of the city, including the area tornado-ravaged section, sits on a bluff overlooking the south side of the Missouri River. But the swollen river is projected to top a levee on the north side of the river by Friday, potentially flooding the city’s airport, which already has been evacuated.

The weather service had received 22 reports of tornadoes by late Wednesday, though some may have been duplicate sightings of the same twister.

A tornado also skipped through the town of Eldon, population 4,900, about 30 miles outside Jefferson City, where it damaged the business district and “tore up several neighborhoods,” Miller County Emergency Management Director Mike Rayhart said.

He said several people were injured seriously enough to be sent to the hospital, but he did not have specifics.

A twister also caused damage and several injuries in the town of Carl Junction, not far from Joplin, on the eighth anniversary of the catastrophic tornado that killed 161 people in that city.

The severe weather was expected to push eastward Thursday, with forecasters saying parts of the Ohio Valley and the mid-Atlantic — including Baltimore and Pittsburgh — could see tornadoes, large hail and strong winds.

Storms and torrential rains have ravaged the Midwest, from Texas through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Illinois, in the past few days.

Two barges carrying a total of about 3,800 pounds of fertilizer broke loose Thursday and floated down the swollen Arkansas River in Oklahoma, spreading alarm downstream as they hit a dam and sank. On Facebook, Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, warned the town’s 600 residents: “If the dam breaks, it will be catastrophic!! Leave now!!”

The barges had been floating out of control, on and off again, since Wednesday night near the town of 600, which was under a mandatory evacuation order due to flooding concerns. Aerial footage from the Oklahoma City television station KFOR showed the moment of impact shortly before noon Thursday.

The Interstate 40 bridge and another span over the river were closed as a precaution. Over Memorial Day weekend in 2002, a barge struck the Interstate 40 bridge pier at Webbers Falls, causing part of the bridge to collapse into the Arkansas River. Fourteen people died after their vehicles plunged into the water.

Missouri’s three tornado fatalities bring to seven the number of deaths from storms this week.

By BEN FINLEY and ALAN SUDERMAN

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — An investigation ordered up by a Virginia medical school failed to determine whether Gov. Ralph Northam is in a 1984 yearbook photo of a man in blackface next to someone in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe.

Investigators with a law firm hired by Eastern Virginia Medical School said Wednesday they couldn’t conclusively establish the identities of either person in the 35-year-old picture that nearly destroyed Northam’s career when it came to light in February.

The Democratic governor initially acknowledged he was in the picture and apologized without saying which costume he was in, then reversed course the next day, saying he was convinced he was not in the photo. But he acknowledged he wore blackface once decades ago, to look like Michael Jackson for a dance contest.

“No individual that we interviewed has told us from personal knowledge that the governor is in the photograph, and no individual with knowledge has come forward to us to report that the governor is in the photograph,” said the report, conducted by the law firm McGuireWoods.

The findings are unlikely to have a major effect on state politics or Northam, who managed to survive the furor and has been trying mightily since then to make amends with the black community.

Virginia politics was turned upside down in a matter of hours last winter after a conservative website posted the picture. The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, other key Democratic groups and top allies immediately called on him to resign.

Investigators said Northam did not believe he was in the photo when he first saw it but did not want to issue an immediate denial in case someone contradicted him.

“The best we can conclude is that he erred on the side of caution initially and immediately regretted not having denied,” said attorney Richard Cullen, who led the investigation.

During the uproar, Northam defied calls to resign and said he wanted to focus his remaining three years in office on addressing racial inequities.

The pressure on him to step down significantly lessened after scandal enveloped his potential successors, both Democrats. Two women publicly accused Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault, which he denied. And just days after calling on Northam to resign, Attorney General Mark Herring announced he, too, had worn in the 1908s when he was in college.

The three interlocking scandals briefly raised the possibility that Virginia’s top three Democrats would lose their jobs and the Republican House speaker would become governor.

While Northam was all but invisible in February and much of March, he is making routine public appearances again. And he has won praise from black lawmakers and others for such moves as ending the suspension of driver’s licenses for motorists with unpaid fines, and a review into how schools teach the nation’s racial history.

Opponents still use the incident against him. House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert recently accused Northam of choosing to “repair his own racist legacy” rather than protect victims of domestic abuse after the governor vetoed a bill requiring a mandatory jail term for repeat offenders.

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Suderman reported from Richmond, Virginia.