LONDON, Ky. (AP) — Storm systems sweeping across parts of the U.S. Midwest and South have left at least 23 people dead, many of them in Kentucky, where what appeared to be a devastating tornado pulverized homes and flipped over a car on an interstate.

In Kentucky, some 14 people were killed by severe weather, and the death toll is likely to rise, according to Gov. Andy Beshear. Local authorities in Laurel County, in the state’s southeast, said nine people were killed after a tornado touched down.

Kayla Patterson, her husband and their five children huddled in a tub in their basement in London, the county seat, as the tornado raged around them.

“You could literally hear just things ripping in the distance, glass shattering everywhere, just roaring like a freight train,” she recalled Saturday. “It was terrible.”

The family eventually emerged to the sounds of sirens and panicked neighbors. While the family’s own home was spared, others right behind it were demolished, Patterson said as the sound of power tools buzzed in the background. The neighborhood was dotted with piles of lumber, metal sheeting, insulation and stray belongings — a suitcase, a sofa, some six-packs of paper towels.

Rescuers were searching for survivors all night and into the morning, the sheriff’s office said. An emergency shelter was set up at a local high school and donations of food and other necessities were arriving.

The National Weather Service hadn’t yet confirmed that a tornado struck, but meteorologist Philomon Geertson said it was likely. It ripped across the largely rural area and extended to the London Corbin Airport shortly before midnight.

Resident Chris Cromer said he got the first of two tornado alerts on his phone around 11:30 p.m. or so, about a half-hour before the tornado struck. He and his wife grabbed their dog, jumped in their car and scrambled to the crawlspace at a relative’s nearby home because the couple’s own crawlspace is small.

“We could hear and feel the vibration of the tornado coming through,” said Cromer, 46. A piece of his roof was ripped off, and windows were broken, but homes around his were destroyed.

“It’s one of those things that you see on the news in other areas, and you feel bad for people — then, when it happens, it’s just surreal,” he said. “It makes you be thankful to be alive, really.”

The storm was the latest severe weather to cause deaths and widespread damage in Kentucky. Two months ago, at least 24 people died in a round of storms that swelled creeks and submerged roads. Hundreds of people were rescued, and most of the deaths were caused by vehicles getting stuck in high water.

A storm in late 2021 spawned tornadoes that killed 81 people and leveled portions of towns in western Kentucky. The following summer, historic floodwaters inundated parts of eastern Kentucky, leaving dozens more dead.

Missouri pounded by storms, with deaths confirmed in St. Louis

About 1,200 tornadoes strike the U.S. annually, and they have been reported in all 50 states over the years. Researchers found in 2018 that deadly tornadoes were happening less frequently in the traditional “Tornado Alley” of Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas and more frequently in parts of the more densely populated and tree-filled mid-South area.

The latest Kentucky storms were part of a weather system Friday that killed seven in Missouri and two in northern Virginia, authorities said. The system also spawned tornadoes in Wisconsin, brought a punishing heat wave to Texas and temporarily enveloped parts of Illinois — including Chicago — in a pall of dust on an otherwise sunny day.

“Well that was…..something,” the weather service’s Chicago office wrote on X after issuing its first-ever dust storm warning for the city. Thunderstorms in central Illinois had pushed strong winds over dry, dusty farmland and northward into the Chicago area, the weather agency said.

In Missouri, St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer said five people died, 38 were injured and more than 5,000 homes were affected in her city.

“The devastation is truly heartbreaking,” she said at a news conference Saturday. An overnight curfew was to continue in the most damaged neighborhoods.

Weather service radar indicated a likely tornado touched down between 2:30 p.m. and 2:50 p.m. in Clayton, Missouri, in the St. Louis area. The apparent tornado touched down in the area of Forest Park, home to the St. Louis Zoo and the site of the 1904 World’s Fair and Olympic Games the same year.

Three people needed aid after part of the Centennial Christian Church crumbled, St. Louis Fire Battalion Chief William Pollihan told The Associated Press.

Stacy Clark said his mother-in-law, Patricia Penelton, died in the church. He described her as a very active church volunteer who had many roles, including being part of the choir.

John Randle said he and his girlfriend were at the St. Louis Art Museum during the storm and were hustled into the basement with about 150 other people.

“You could see the doors flying open, tree branches flying by and people running,” said Randle, 19.

At the Saint Louis Zoo, falling trees severely damaged the roof of a butterfly facility. Staffers quickly corralled most of the butterflies, the zoo said on social media, and a conservatory in suburban Chesterfield is caring for the displaced creatures.

A tornado struck in Scott County, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of St. Louis, killing two people, injuring several others and destroying multiple homes, Sheriff Derick Wheetley wrote on social media.

Forecasters say severe weather could batter southern Plains
The weather service said Saturday that severe thunderstorms, large hail and “a couple of tornadoes” were expected across the southern Plains, with especially high risk in north Texas.

___

Contributing were Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz in New York, Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta, Mike Catalini in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, and Juan Lozano in Houston.

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PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (AP) — Officials in California say police and firefighters are responding to an explosion that rocked the city of Palm Springs.

The city of Palm Springs said Saturday in a social medial post that the explosion happened at 11 a.m. local time and that residents were being asked to avoid the area around North Indian Canyon Drive near East Tachevah Drive.

This image provided by Nima Tabrizi shows firefighers at the scene of an explosion at Palm Springs, Calif., on Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Nima Tabrizi via AP)

Investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are on their way to the scene to help assess what happened, according to spokesperson Nicole Lozano.

Dr. Maher Abdallah, who runs the American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic where the explosion occurred, told The Associated Press in a phone interview that all of his staff were safe and accounted for.

The explosion damaged the practice’s office space, where it conducts consultations with patients, but left the IVF lab and all of the stored embryos there unharmed.

“I really have no clue what happened,” Abdallah said. “Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients.”

Nima Tabrizi, 37, of Santa Monica, said he was inside a cannabis dispensary nearby when he felt a massive explosion.

“The building just shook, and we go outside and there’s massive cloud smoke,” Tabrizi said. “Crazy explosion. It felt like a bomb went off. … We went up to the scene, and we saw human remains.”

Palm Springs is a tony community in the desert about a two-hour drive east of Los Angeles, known for upscale resorts and a history of celebrity residents.

The question posed to fans last month at the draft party inside U.S. Bank Stadium was simple.

 Would you be willing to actually bleed purple and gold?

The answer was on full display this week when the Vikings released their 2025-26 schedule with a 1 minute, 47 second video, featuring a number of fans getting tattooed with caricatures of each opponent for next season.

Yes, the body art was 100 percent real, and 100 percent permanent, courtesy of the folks at Green River Tattoo in Minneapolis.

“We have fearlessly loyal fans,” said Heather Larsen, senior director of digital marketing and content strategy for the Vikings. “It wasn’t hard for us to get a lot of people interested. We had a lot of great enthusiasm and willingness to be a part of it. We just had to narrow it down to who wanted which tattoo and where they wanted it on their body.”

The process started a couple of months ago when different members of the Vikings first sat down to think of creative ways to release their schedule. No longer does a simple post on social media suffice, not when it’s become an annual competition across the NFL to see which team can go the most viral.

“We like to bring in a lot of our creative department,” said Laney Austin, senior manager of social media and email for the Vikings. “It’s sort of all hands on deck for us.”

Some of the most notable ideas that the Vikings have used in the past to release their schedule include having Hall of Fame defensive tackle John Randle featured prominently on screen, as well as flying a drone throughout TCO Performance Center.

The concept of convincing fans to get tattoos this time around came via senior art manager Jackie Ramacher, who shared it with the group after attending an annual conference in Austin, Texas.

“It came up during a session I was in,” Ramacher said. “I was like, ‘Wait. We have such dedicated fans. Would they be willing to do that for us?’ ”

As soon as everybody with the Vikings was onboard with the plan, Ramacher and producer Alex Miller reached out to Green River Tattoo and set up a meeting with owners Collin Rigsby and Steven Skorjanec.

“It was really important for us to highlight a local tattoo artist and kind of let them run with it,” Ramacher said. “We wanted it to be authentic to the tattoo artist themselves.”

The biggest challenge was the fact that the tattoos were going to be highlighting each opponent. Though the Vikings could have gone out of their way to try to be funny, they decided the best way to go about it was to keep the focus on what was important to them.

“We wanted it to be more about highlighting our fans,” Ramacher said. “Just showing how dedicated they were to us.”

After working with Green River Tattoo to figure out what the tattoos were going to look like — the designs were at least partially related to the Vikings in some way, shape, or form — the next step was finding enough canvases to work on.

The initial ask was to various season ticket holders, which provided a good base, and the rest came from the draft party where they interviewed fans on camera to gauge their interest.

The response was overwhelmingly positive as pretty much everybody involved proved they were, indeed, willing to actually bleed purple and gold.

“I feel like something that added to it was that they got to be a part of our story,” Miller said. “That sort of helped sell it to a lot of people.”

Everything went down at Green River Tattoo on May 6. More than a dozen fans showed up, including Daniels Hastings, who recently appeared on the Netflix series Love Is Blind, and agreed to get a lip tattoo for the occasion.

A week and a half later, after a lot more work on the backend, the Vikings released their schedule, which was extremely rewarding as it represented the culmination of so many people working together toward a common goal.

As proud as everybody was of the final product, the gratification for some people didn’t come until roughly 12 hours later. That’s because the Vikings also decided to put on a flash event at Green River Tattoo the following day offering free tattoos in conjunction with them releasing their schedule.

“We were like, ‘Are people actually going to show up?’ ” said Vikings creative director Alicia Dreyer. “As soon as we got to Green River Tattoo and saw the long line of people and how excited they were then it was like, ‘OK. This is amazing. We did something here.’ ”

That moment made everything worth it.

“We loved seeing the connection with the community,” Ramacher said. “Maybe nationally this video wasn’t the most viral. That’s OK. We feel like locally we made an impact and that’s so much more meaningful.”

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When the PWHL started with its first draft, the great players went early, and it never really stopped. With only six teams, and virtually every post college player available, the league’s six teams were going to be stacked.

So, in a hockey league built on parity, what separates the champion from the rest?

“It comes down to details, habits, playing the right way, playing hard, being hard to play against,” said Minnesota captain Kendal Coyne Schofield. She and her teammates are the only ones who know what that’s like after winning the PWHL’s inaugural Walter Cup title last season.

The Frost are back and ready to defend that championship starting Tuesday in Ottawa against a Charge team making its first playoff appearance. They just finished a four-game series against regular-season leader Montreal, so Coyne Scholfield and the Frost aren’t resting on their bone fides.

The experience of winning it all before — the Frost rallied from two games down to beat Boston last spring — helps, Coyne Schofield said, “but it’s not everything.”

“They just played an incredible four-game series the last week and a half, so that’s experience that they’ve just gained,” she added.

Game 1 is set for 6 p.m. CDT at Ottawa’s TD Place Arena.

“The little things … ultimately help win championships, and being good at those night in and night out,” Coyne Schofield said. “A series is hard to be in, and it’s learning quickly, whether it’s something good or something bad, and recognizing that the most important shift is the next one in front of you.”

Both teams rallied to make the playoffs. Minnesota had to win its last two regular-season games to get in as the last of the four seeds. Ottawa overcame a 1-4-0 start and finished the regular season with a 6-3-0 run, then was chosen by Montreal as its first-round opponent.

The Frost and Charge were each 3-3-0 against one another in the regular season.

“I think it says a lot about the parity that has been cultivated in this league,” Charge coach Carla MacLeod said. “It’s incredibly close, it’s incredibly competitive. On any given day, you just have to put your best foot forward, and for our group, that’s been really our focus the whole season, really to just get better and grow.

“If you look at the back half of our season, that’s when we really were able to create some momentum and belief.”

Goaltenders

Charge goaltender Emerance Maschmeyer has been on long term injured reserve since being injured early in a 3-2 victory over Minnesota on March 11. Gwen Phillips has been terrific in relief, going 3-0-1 with a 1.11 goals-against average and .919 save percentage in her first playoff series.

MacLeod said Maschmeyer is day to day with a lower-body injury but acknowledged that Phillips “has been phenomenal.”

“We knew that practicing against her, how lucky we are to have the goalies that we have on our hockey club,” the coach added, “but it’s great to see her come in and play the way she’s been playing. When you try to go on a run like this, it takes guts, it takes players stepping up, and Gwen has done that for us. … We’re pretty confident in front of her.”

The Frost have relied on two goaltenders, really, over their first two seasons, with Maddie Rooney earning a 2.07 GAA and .907 save percentage in 19 regular-season games, and Nicole Hensley, 7-3-1 in 11 regular-season games. Frost coach Ken Klee wasn’t tipping his hand on who would start Game 1.

“It’s no secret we’ve been relying on both of them to play well,” he said. “We did it last year and did it this year, as well, and kind of had the same mindset.”

Briefly

Coyne Schofield was the Frost’s leading scorer in the regular season with 12 goals and 24 points in the regular season — “She’s been our MVP this season,” Klee said — but former Gophers center Taylor Heise is the top scorer in the playoffs so far with a goal and six assists, just ahead of five teammates.

“She’s a big-time player, a big-time personality, and she wants to shine when the lights are bright,” Klee said. “So, I think for her, standing out in these series is just a way for her of re-affirming that she’s one of the best players in the world.”

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